well. it looks like nobody's said it yet and I was thinking about making a thread about it but here the opportunity stands before me.

Yall know about. The Fediverse?

you might have heard of "mastodon" but mastodon is actually the software that many sites use and theres plenty more than that! you may have also heard of "peertube" in the talks about avoiding youtube thats also part of the fediverse. The thing that makes the fediverse great is that each instance is run by a different person and has a different mod team. What that means is that its shielded from some of the (imo) worst aspects of the big social medias. Mainly that mods are real actual people and generally can/will react to bad actors in a timely manner, most of the popular software used is open sourced so even if say the main guy enshitifies things theres forks and other options to go to (or just not update I guess), and that one can go down but they won't All go down, you can even migrate your account (provided both instances are compatible for that) to a new place if yours gets sunset. I'm on dragon.style and I love it! however the admin has expressed frustrations with maintenance on the backend and may close shop if things get worse. and I've already scouted out potential new "homes" theres plush.city, denden.world, wetdry.world, and many others! (there also used to be a couple of homestuck themed instances that even had built in quirk tools but im pretty sure most went belly-up. sad!)

If you are a tech savvy person you can even start your own instance! it can be solo or you can invite friends (or just make it open!) I know that joining an instance seems to be a big hurdle for people but I must stress: its easier than you think. some places may have a review process as a way to deter bots, but don't let that scare you off!! just go for it!!! if you want more info and a beginners guide look here: https://fedi.tips/ and here is a tool that can be used to find you an instance to start out on https://fedidb.com/welcome (i recommend clicking the small communities toggle, the Big Instances tend to have moderation issues and are sometimes blocked by other smaller instances because of it) and remember! you dont HAVE to stay if you dont vibe with the instance and happen to catch wind of something better. you can just Move

sadly, as far as im aware, there is no fediverse tumblr clone... the format of tumblr is by far my favorite way to Experience social media. the tagging system is Perfection... and so many tumblr clones fail and go bankrupt because its such a media-heavy platform style (which is why federation would help because now everyone shares a tiny bit of the costs)