Minds.com is The Galt's Gulch of Social Media

"Who is John Galt?"

In Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, the government increases control over its citizens--particularly in resources, that a man named John Galt leads the best and brightest of the United States to go off and built their own society in order to be more free. This society is called "Galt's Gulch."

Of course, I'm not a mind-reader, so I can't tell the intentions of #minds creators such as @ottman. But the story of this website appears to be a parallel. Right now, Facebook might be the largest social media platform out there. Everyone and their grandmother has a Facebook account, partially because everyone has a Facebook. It's the best way to keep in touch with loved ones, the best way to promote a business, and so on because of how massive it is. However, it's recently become more authoritarian. The wrong words and images can be censored. This isn't limited to say, threats or racial slurs. If you're, say, a member of the #maga camp and you share a picture of #Trump containing a quote from him, what happens? That image would be covered by a filer warning the viewer of graphic content--the same warning you'd see as if you're about to look at something gory. So not only is there censorship, but biased censorship. It would also explain why content creators such as Blaire White are banned from the platform seemingly every other month. Plus, you've also got the Facebook thought police including its own users, and it's a fairly similar story with Twitter and YouTube.

Therein lies the appeal of Minds. As an active user, the worst I'll see is people disagreeing with me, which is totally fine. There is no censorship, and the users really seem to value civil discussion in the marketplace of ideas.

And considering that one can monetize his account here, it might become plausible to make a living from it. So many years ago on YouTube, when it was a much smaller platform, to try and make a living off of being a vlogger was nothing more than a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. So perhaps with enough time, it's possible with this site when enough people wake up to the dangers of censorship in their own backyards and flock to this Galt's Gulch of social media to freely express themselves. If this sort of transition occurs though, it'll probably be the only way that increasingly authoritarian platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will finally get the message--seeing their titan companies crumble.