Enjoyed reading this. It's really hard to imagine a healthy and enjoyable social media service these days. I would rather Facebook (and the others) never existed, but I can't deny that it was...
Enjoyed reading this. It's really hard to imagine a healthy and enjoyable social media service these days. I would rather Facebook (and the others) never existed, but I can't deny that it was extremely useful for me from 2006-2014 or so. I made so many more connections through it. I have so many great photos people tagged me in. It was so much easier to plan parties and other events. It was just great being able to say "I'm going to be in this city these days" and people you knew could message you. None of these use cases have alternatives (including current FB) that reach the same level of utility, convenience, or user experience.
A social media service that actually helps you get more out of real world connections could be great. It's harder than ever (post-covid, getting older) to meet people and I don't think that's healthy or good for life in generally.
Maybe my concept of social media is different because I don't really see any of that coming about in the possibilities brought up in the article.
There's a lot I appreciate about this article, but I think it's ignoring multiple elephants in the room. Because of that, I can't say that it's much other than a valiant overview of the social...
There's a lot I appreciate about this article, but I think it's ignoring multiple elephants in the room. Because of that, I can't say that it's much other than a valiant overview of the social media sphere as is, with a desperate plea for a future that certainly not come.
In particular, I think it avoided discussing the management decisions of social media companies. It conveniently skips going into details of why Social Media is in this state, i.e. decisions made with the intent to increase ad revenue via user engagement. We really shouldn't ignore that, as it absolves the companies by offering that this change was an inevitable outcome.
Additionally, while I do think that government regulation could potentially fix this problem, realistically this won't happen. With the venerable ages of lawmakers, an aggressive and active lobbying sector, and the ability to conduct psy-ops on users, democratic states are fighting an uphill battle to reign in these companies.
More Video Essay Examples (and a podcast)
People today are lonely, isolated, and frequently terrified of interacting with strangers. I don't think the answer will come from a combined sociological and technological solution. I don't think new web protocols or more transparency can fix this, and the general masses of users are not organized or collected enough to really make an effort to change.
Personally, I think that inevitably the ad revenue will dry up in the face of a looming economic downturn, and climate change disasters will force new paradigms, given the issues with the electrical grid.
Sometimes I think that going back creating a mailing list for a zine is the actual best solution. But more realistically, I think that communities like Tildes can exist and thrive without the need for the grandeur of the Web 2.0 Gold rush. After all, online social media essentially developed by rushing to build vast centralized online communities while slowly crowding out smaller, more individual forums. In one sense, no one asked for this, as much as money was poured in to build these spaces and the original platforms were quite novel and enjoyable. I don't think there was even a realization of changes until years after the fact, despite it essentially just being a new epoch, if not a second Eternal September. Heck, it took until 2022 to coin the term enshittification.
My point is, I don't think we can build our way out of this. I think realistically we're in a mania before the come down. I think that inevitable changes in the outside world will be more consequential than any coordinated effort trying to fix a broken system. I think that we might just need to focus on our individual efforts to connect with our local communities, and the people in it. While I wish there was some coordinated, organized response that could be done, I don't think one can emerge the way that the author imagines.
The last days of social media might be the first days of something more human: a web that remembers why we came online in the first place — not to be harvested but to be heard, not to go viral but to find our people, not to scroll but to connect. We built these systems, and we can certainly build better ones. The question is whether we will do this or whether we will continue to drown.
After all, we can only take responsibility for our own actions and behaviors. It's a hard lesson to learn.
I will be building physical computing and electronics club for young people in the upcoming years. So I obviously believe we can build our way out of this mess. Just not online. The article is...
I don't think we can build our way out of this.
I will be building physical computing and electronics club for young people in the upcoming years. So I obviously believe we can build our way out of this mess. Just not online.
The article is spot on that people move to smaller, more personal spaces. The era of massive social media is luckily slowly fading.
But there will be attempts to monetize and enshittify these private spaces as well. Armies of bots and the hosting platforms themselves will destroy them eventually.
We need to reclaim physical spaces. Otherwise we will keep slowly going insane.
Enjoyed reading this. It's really hard to imagine a healthy and enjoyable social media service these days. I would rather Facebook (and the others) never existed, but I can't deny that it was extremely useful for me from 2006-2014 or so. I made so many more connections through it. I have so many great photos people tagged me in. It was so much easier to plan parties and other events. It was just great being able to say "I'm going to be in this city these days" and people you knew could message you. None of these use cases have alternatives (including current FB) that reach the same level of utility, convenience, or user experience.
A social media service that actually helps you get more out of real world connections could be great. It's harder than ever (post-covid, getting older) to meet people and I don't think that's healthy or good for life in generally.
Maybe my concept of social media is different because I don't really see any of that coming about in the possibilities brought up in the article.
There's a lot I appreciate about this article, but I think it's ignoring multiple elephants in the room. Because of that, I can't say that it's much other than a valiant overview of the social media sphere as is, with a desperate plea for a future that certainly not come.
In particular, I think it avoided discussing the management decisions of social media companies. It conveniently skips going into details of why Social Media is in this state, i.e. decisions made with the intent to increase ad revenue via user engagement. We really shouldn't ignore that, as it absolves the companies by offering that this change was an inevitable outcome.
Video Essay Examples
Facebook
Google Search Algorithms
More Video Essay Examples (and a podcast)
General shift in Trends
Dead Internet Theory
Section 230
Personally, I think that inevitably the ad revenue will dry up in the face of a looming economic downturn, and climate change disasters will force new paradigms, given the issues with the electrical grid.
Sometimes I think that going back creating a mailing list for a zine is the actual best solution. But more realistically, I think that communities like Tildes can exist and thrive without the need for the grandeur of the Web 2.0 Gold rush. After all, online social media essentially developed by rushing to build vast centralized online communities while slowly crowding out smaller, more individual forums. In one sense, no one asked for this, as much as money was poured in to build these spaces and the original platforms were quite novel and enjoyable. I don't think there was even a realization of changes until years after the fact, despite it essentially just being a new epoch, if not a second Eternal September. Heck, it took until 2022 to coin the term enshittification.
My point is, I don't think we can build our way out of this. I think realistically we're in a mania before the come down. I think that inevitable changes in the outside world will be more consequential than any coordinated effort trying to fix a broken system. I think that we might just need to focus on our individual efforts to connect with our local communities, and the people in it. While I wish there was some coordinated, organized response that could be done, I don't think one can emerge the way that the author imagines.
After all, we can only take responsibility for our own actions and behaviors. It's a hard lesson to learn.
I will be building physical computing and electronics club for young people in the upcoming years. So I obviously believe we can build our way out of this mess. Just not online.
The article is spot on that people move to smaller, more personal spaces. The era of massive social media is luckily slowly fading.
But there will be attempts to monetize and enshittify these private spaces as well. Armies of bots and the hosting platforms themselves will destroy them eventually.
We need to reclaim physical spaces. Otherwise we will keep slowly going insane.