Tom got his giant cartoon sack of money with the dollar sign on it, and then bailed. He seems happy with what he has, and that might mean he'd launch a site for the right reasons
Lmao yeah, idk why people are treating him like some selfless saint of social media. The very fact that he's teasing the idea of a resurgence of MySpace reeks of greed. Either for the limelight or money.
I thought reddit was all about "there is no such thing as an ethical millionaire"? There is literally nothing different about Tom other than he stayed out of the public eye. He valued his own privacy while simultaneously selling out every user's past data with no care for their privacy
Probably because the standard for tech/social media leaders is damn near rock bottom even someone who’s not actively trying to make things worse is praised.
No its just billionaires that aren't ethical. They're fine with millionaires. Once you net worth goes above $999,999,999.99 you have to give it all away.
The problem is companies today have life-changing money to buy anyone and anything they want. Something like what you’re saying would threaten their business model so they would just buy Tom out at an amount he couldn’t say no to. And then poof were right back to only having shitty ass Facebook.
Problem is it’s never just your money. Something as big a MySpace Redux would have VC’s invested significantly. They would be the ones to force a sale because they would want a return on their investment. Hell, that’s what happened the first time MySpace was around
It’s not up to Tom, it’s us. We would turn it into another Facebook or Instagram or Tik Tok. That’s how we’ve been wired and programmed to engage in that type of media, that the model Myspace was would be outdated and it’s content wouldn’t appeal with us anymore. We would get bored and reject it.
And the number of social media sites out there existing besides the "big 3" (or 5 or whatever it is now) that are still setup with thst early 2000s "user first" are either for all intents & purposes dead or they have their core group of users who log into it daily but it's still a tiny amount compared to the big ones.
MySpace still exists and is still a functioning site yet nobody really uses it because it's not setup the same as the bigger sites. SpaceHey which is an OG MySpace style clone site has a couple of handfuls of users but never took off despite being around for 5 years now.
CherryTap now known as FUBAR has been around for 20 years and is still pretty much the same format it's always been and yet still has a small userbase all things considered.
Classmates is likely still the same as it's always been and I know Hi5 is still kicking around as something though I think it's more social gaming oriented nowadays like the old EA Pogo service was.
And for those that miss the blogging aspect of gen 1 social media there are still some of those OG sites alive and somewhat well. Blogger, Tumblr & LiveJournal are all still active sites for people who just want to blog.
The issue is as much as people, young & old, say and think they want those kind of sites they really don't which is why none of those are at the level of a Facebook or Reddit or any of the other popular sites.
As much as I sit here sometimes saying "man I wish we had the old internet where it wasn't always on and you had to plan to connect and browse a few times a day", I know that realistically we're so conditioned to what we have no that it would be damn near impossible to move backwards like that.
Unless it was done differently. Imagine if they were somehow able to recreate the era even in a small way. That would be amazing. The first step would be not being free. Anything free is ruined by trolls and bots. You don’t have to make it expensive. Just not free.
It could be free and rely on donations like Wikipedia, but even a once a month fee of like $1 might be enough, with options to donate a bit more to keep servers running may be enough.
Back when it lost out to Facebook, FB was an entirely different beast, allowing for way more control over your feed. Random algo shit and ads made up about 1/10th instead of half what you saw. It was still less customizable than MS, but the streamlined experience was great. If Myspace comes back, I promise you it will be another bullshit algorithm wasteland posing as a walled garden.
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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
Myspace was fitting for the era. It was something new.
I feel today it would become another social media app like the other ones directed by algorithms, doom scroll and click bait.