Social media links on websites

When the Internet started out, people made their own isolated websites. Guestbooks or contact forms were one of the few ways to interact with a website (i.e. a person or a company).

It became fashionable in the late 2000s (with the increased popularity of Facebook and Twitter) to include links to "somewhere else on the internet that also belonged to the website owner".

Facebook and Twitter (early 2010s)

Not many widely-used social media websites existed well into 2010, so the two standard icons seemed to be Facebook and Twitter:

• Facebook for richer, slower-paced visual updates (think photo albums)
• Twitter for shorter, fast-paced textual updates (think news headlines)

Each site had a straightforward purpose. There was no ideology tied to any. You weren't "young or old" (well, most internet users at the time were young people), "liberal or conservative", "religious or atheist", "normie or niche", or whatever, just for using either of the two websites. It was like simply listing a telephone and fax number on your storefront.

The schisms (mid-2010s / early-2020s)

It now seems like such a long time ago that those two "standard" icons were benign, neutral and eternal. As early as the mid-2010s, Facebook began dropping off from this "row of icons" on each website. Most people stopped visiting Facebook for whatever reason.

Newer networks also became more appealing: YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Tiktok, Discord, Telegram, etc. Some "conservative" and/or "far right" groups also felt frustration at the "censoring" of their content on the old F and T, so they began using other niche networks, such as Gab and Minds.

By the early 2020s, "Facebook and Twitter" were no longer the standard icons on websites. For reasons we all should know, Twitter became X in 2023 and a mass migration began out of it. A mass migration back into it also happened, but by a different, "pro-free-speech" group of people. Most "politically neutral" websites still have both Facebook and Twitter/X icons, but by no means are they still standard.

Today's lay of the land

Now here we are, in 2025, and we can almost list the dizzying array of active social networks and place them roughly on the spectrum:

• Bluesky (far-left; they don't want anyone right-of-centre)
• Mastodon (a little more moderate than Bluesky)
• Discord (a little leftist)
• Tumblr (historically leftist but not too extreme in 2025)
• Threads ("gateway" to the far-left)
• TikTok (quite a mix bag of people from all viewpoints)
• YouTube (slightly left-leaning but becoming more centrist)
• Instagram (hard to tell "where you are" if this is all you have)
• Facebook (becoming increasingly right-leaning recently)
• Twitter / X ("gateway" to the far-right; leftists remain)
• Minds (not too radical but right-of-centre)
• Telegram (a mix bag of right-of-centre ideologies)
• Truth Social (predominantly pro-Trump and hardly extremist)
• Rumble (definitely right-of-centre but not super far-right)
• Gab (predominantly far-right)

Of those social media sites, the icons of these that you see on a website, will therefore hint at the website owner's ideology. It doesn't always line up. Someone who doesn't get too political might get "as far as" Telegram. A conservative might actually openly use Tumblr and Discord. However, a conservative will almost never ask you to hit them up on Bluesky and a bleeding-heart liberal will never admit to using Truth Social and Gab (unless to troll!)

Social network usage as a function of occupations and hobbies

Many networks now cater to just a certain niche of professionals or hobbyists, for example:

The tech developer (typically moderately to extremely liberal):

• Bluesky
• Discord
• Github (code-sharing)
• YouTube

It remains rare for a developer to openly admit they use any right-leaning platforms!

The journalist:

• Bluesky
• Threads
• Medium (a very magazine-like blogging platform)
• Substack (kind of like Medium but less popular)

Naturally, their social media links will mostly point to text-based websites!

Meanwhile, professionals and hobbyists like photographers and musicians might try to stray away from text-based mediums, using Instagram as a bridge or gateway to their Flickrs and Soundclouds:

The photographer:

• Instagram
• Flickr
• 500px
• VSCO

The DJ or musician:

• Instagram
• Soundcloud
• Bandcamp
• YouTube
• TikTok

The filmmaker:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• (many other niche film websites)

"Instagram as a bridge" may change in the future, depending on the prevailing political climate. Perhaps it might become TikTok or something completely different.

Social network usage as a function of location

In addition to that, I have covered only networks where English is the dominant language.

Social networks where languages other than English is dominant, do also exist, such as Weibo (Chinese) and VK (Russian).

With Russia becoming more isolationist since the "Special Military Operation" of 2022, pro-Russian websites may choose to list only Russian-oriented social networks like VK (vkontakte) and OK (odnoklassniki).

Likewise, Chinese websites may or may not list English social media sites and may only include Weibo, TikTok (known in China as Douyin), Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) and so on.