It’s easier than ever to stand up and be heard. It’s harder than ever to stand out. You can create your own website, publish the content you choose (video, podcast, blog etc) but how will your audience find you? If a man publishes content and no woman reads it, is he still wrong?
Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have become monopolies by connecting audiences with the content they want. What happens if they (or their algorithms) decide your content is unacceptable? You can be cancelled, deplatformed, banned or censored from the site. You may not be completely silenced. They might allow you to publish, but demonetized/demonized so that you don’t receive ad revenue. Or traffic to your content may be throttled, shadow banned, so that a trickle of your potential audience reaches you.
The internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it, but there is a time lag of months or years for that to happen. If your content is on your own website, like this, you can not be completely silenced. Do not limit your content to the large monopolies. How do you find alternatives to Google? Do you Google for it?
This is a summary of the major social media sites and the top alternatives to them. Publish your content widely, automatically, with tools such as Hootsuite. If you suddenly get delisted, it’s good if your audience knows where else they can find you. There are hundreds of alternatives, but what matters is who has the biggest audience. It’s a marketing problem, not a technical challenge. Decentralized solutions are censorship resistant and allow you to strictly control your privacy. Unfortunately, if you aren’t on the #1 sites that have come to dominate their space, you won’t reach your full audience.
Google search alternatives
DuckDuckGo doesn’t track you, respects your privacy. If they someday refuse to censor search results and autocomplete results, they have a shot at taking a bigger share of the search market.
Bing 135th most visited website in the world. If you are a programmer like me, you’ll love the code search feature. Great for video search. YouTube is second to Google as a search engine, which Google also owns.
Yahoo! Proof that being #1 in search is not forever. A distant 3rd
SearchEncrypt privacy focused and you won’t be restricted to your google bubble.
YouTube video search alternatives
Vimeo quality over quantity, privacy options. 17th most visited website in the world.
Metacafe As a viewer, I like that content is not duplicated within Metacafe.
DailyMotion 27th most visited website in the world. Higher tolerance for controversial content.
Veoh unlimited length video allowed.
Twitter microblogging alternatives
Gab Open source, decentralized. No matter how objectionable what you have to say is, you can say it here.
Minds open source, earn crypto
GNU Social decentralized and uncensored
Facebook alternatives
Diaspora more privacy aware, federated
Sociall.io decentralized, Ethereum blockchain based, won’t sell your data to the companies that the demise of Cambridge Analytica spawned. Yes, they are out there.
MeWe Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, sits on the board. Keep an eye on this one.
Instagram alternative
Ello built by artists, for artists.
Pinterest lots of food and fashion pictures, follow your friends
Browser alternatives
Brave is built on Chromium, which means that Google Chrome add-ins are supported. Privacy focused with good performance. Easy for the average person to use and protects you well from commercial surveillance, which accounts for a lot of your web traffic. Cryptocurrency based tipping.
Tor Ideal if you are defending human rights, fighting an oppressive government. The Onion Router requires a bit of technical know how to ensure you are truly secure, performs slower than regular browsing. If you are concerned about surveillance of you or your loved ones by people who can show up at your door with guns, its the only one I’d use.
Whatever websites you use, do it more securely by following my advice on passwords and multi factor authentication