What do I want out of my online tools?
I’m making these lists because I’m very susceptible to upending my social media habits when a new thing comes along and then feeling unsatisfied. Having this reference point helps me remain aware of why I keep using what I use and what I am willing to let go of in a necessary migration.
Instant communications
Must-haves
- Semi-persistent text storage (allows deletion)
- VoIP, individual and group
- VoIP spaces with screen and sound share
- Multi-device access
- Exportable text logs
Convenient
- Granular notification control
- Multiple rooms shared with the same user groups
- Topic threading in one channel
- Open source, self-hostable
- Federate
Right now, Discord meets all of the main requirements, although it’s not open source, self hostable or federated, it also meets half of the secondary requirements. Matrix is the closest second but unfortunately the screen-sharing capabilities are very limited and group calls still don’t work well, so I can’t make it my main driver.
Social media
Must-haves
- Primarily sharing based (as opposed to publishing own content)
- Timeline curation; search based, not-algorithmic
- Feed mechanisms (either internal follow system or RSS)
- A way to easily save and export posts (mine, others’)
- Full content readability (no hyperlinking internally)
Convenient
- A way to save the posts for later perusal and curation
- Granular privacy options (per post, not per-account)
- Content filtering per keyword or tag
- Self-hosted
- Federated
I currently maintain accounts on Tumblr and Mastodon reliably, and not much else. I’m going to go ahead and say that I do not like Mastodon as social media because the microblogging format is a nightmare to me, and it’s impossible to find anything without ElasticSearch. That being said, the granular privacy is so good and necessary to me, and the list and word filtering works so smoothly that it’s an excellent way to keep up with closer friends. Tumblr remains the only social media that meets all hard criteria and it’s hard to replace as of 2026.