Nightlight. Why would I make it harder to decide how I spend my time by using it?

! No person who uses Nightlight is being shamed for using it. This is about how the platform affects users and not the users themselves. In fact, I never used it so I wouldn't have any people I didn't like from there anyway.

Get your own first impressions of Nightlight here via their landing page.
https://night-light.cz/

I got this video in my recommended on a social media called Nightlight. Even though it at first glance looked like a better social media that actually has an interesting plan to monetize, I do not recommend this site. I don't plan to try it as the video has told me enough about it to have a good idea on why it's could be problematic for anyone who uses it.

I plan to repeat stuff from this video so no need to watch it unless for fact checking or some other good reason.

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My second reminder so far. If you added a filter into your adblocker, you seen this. :D

Minor Issue Starter

I thought it could actually replace Discord because Kitsun from the YouTube video above explained it takes stuff from Discord. That's why I was curious initially. With my limited use of the site, I couldn't find any "server" or group/community place features. This might not be the case if I looked a bit harder, but the home page for priming users did not explain such and might as well not exist to me.

If you plan to make a home page for your product, please explain in way more detail and have multiple pages for various features if need be. Like Kitsun, it may not seem important but it's your first impression so just throwing the user into the app with all the complex and unfamiliar UI is not how you retain attention. (Assertion is based on the fact their link in the video is to the site itself rather than the landing page.)

The Endless Calling Social Media

The monetization is presented to look like a better alternative, but it still has the same underlying compromises of what Discord uses.

Unlike platforms like Neocities and SpaceHey which we are on now that give almost full HTML/CSS control of how we present ourselves, Nightlight instead gives us limited selection of items for profile customization. There is no way I know to actually make your own page like they proclaim. (Yes, I could still be wrong about this too.)

To add to the limitation, they make you pay for those cosmetic items mentioned above. They don't even just cost money either. You can earn the credits need by platform engagement or even playing on their Minecraft server. There are also some cosmetics that are limited time only for events and don't even look that good. (1K users decor) They didn't need to do this, but it makes it clear they don't respect our time as much as they should.

Both the limitation and monetization is about creating cosmetics that seem to appeal to consumer callings rather than giving people the ability to create their own space. This is so new stuff can be made to replace the old stuff with no good way of ever getting the stuff that fits yourself best. My bias might be a bit strong here, but I would rather myself and others be on social media where I see at least a bit of personal expression through design rather than solely consumer fast fashion.

One Merit I Give

There is a good reason most social media don't give as much freedom besides monetization. Most people are not good enough designers to make a good looking site, let alone smart enough to use the tools to do so. Having standard and simple profiles means that the user can't make a bad profile functionally and visually. There is also to the benefit of the platform by being able to use most profiles to make good impressions of themselves rather than have users do whatever the users want and make the platform as a whole seem worse for it. There are probably other reasons as well, but the point is that my biases and arguments aren't really that impactful as I could make them out to be.

Questions for the readers who used the site

How wrong am I with this writing? Was I giving the site shit when it's actually worth something? etc. If you are one of the people who decided to actually look into this site like a good researcher would, tell me more about it. I am serious when I say I didn't actually take a good look at it. Right now, I don't really care to go back and check anymore, but if you like this site you can gives some arguments why I am deranged if you even care to waste effort on me.

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