The builders of the next generation of social tools are doubtless already busy. I’d venture to say we’re looking for the wrong thing, if we’re expecting the Facebook-killer to be another giant platform.
Is it really good for human psychology to have these hyper-connected, star-maker platforms so prominent in our lives? Online fame does very strange things to people, warping the way they interact with their actual physical surroundings, and the real people who inhabit them. Brings to mind the girl doing her TikTok dance in the middle of a lecture. It’s quite bizarre, but worth trying to understand.
Anyhow, none of this is to disagree with you, sadly. Except to say, I think there is also appetite for more humane technology, which doesn’t try to sink such deep hooks into us.
This is how progress usually works. Advancements are made, there are pitfalls / consequences, we learn from those, then new advancements are made.
The modern age is progressing too quickly though, it's just "advancements are made, people just barely begin recognizing the downsides, new advancements are made way before we adapt to the previous advancements". The life of someone from 1700 vs someone from 1850 is more similar than the life of someone from 1990 to 2020
Not to claim any special insight, but taking just a couple years out has been enough to see that the flaws of the current generation are not inherent to the tech, that things can be built differently, and that I can be a hopefully more mindful builder.
That will at a stroke provide an alternative network to Whatsapp available on every phone and desktop.
Apple is currently resistant but I think they'll come round to the idea once they realise that that they can pretty easily displace Meta from day to day messaging.
I agree but mostly because I think the exodus happened years ago. If you look at the view counts for tweets that don't 'go viral' most of them get seen by about 10% of the account's followers. Even a popular account like Elon's doesn't get more than 20 or 30% of the followers seeing the tweets most of the time. Whacky timeline algorithm fun aside, that implies a large number of users aren't regularly checking their accounts any more. Twitter probably peaked a long time ago.
I’m not sure how consistent application of moderation rules, refocusing on actual user safety like CSA instead of preferred pronoun use, and transparency when it comes to government manipulation of political conversation is ‘pulling out the jenga blocks’ but Musk can certainly done a better job with Twitter than Doctorow did with Boingboing.
"Hyperstition is a positive feedback circuit including culture as a component. It can be defined as the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies." https://www.orphandriftarchive.com/articles/hyperstition-an-...
But in general I don't think I'm taking the permanence of twitter or fb for granted - they both fill a clear need and I don't see any new players emerging to dominate the niche they fill (mastodon is not going to replace twitter)