“Social media is dying, I only use it everyday!”
- The author of this article
I wish it were, but it really isn’t.
Social media is so everywhere it’s even outside of social media.
This article stinks of an agenda. The author goes out of their way not to mention the term Fediverse (pluriverse? wtf is that?), and they clearly haven’t done their due diligence on Activity Pub. Either they skimped on the research or this article was heavily edited afterwards to remove any concept of the Fediverse being a viable alternative to centralized platforms. Doesn’t surprise me coming from Business Insider.
That being said, the overall dynamic the article speaks to is valid, as is the discussion it engenders, so have an upvote despite my gripes with the writing.
Yeah I found the article a bizarre read. It talks about ActovityPub and Mastodon but fails to mention the fediverse at all. Instead it talks about the “pluriverse”, some random new term pulled from some paper, and paints a vision of people spread across various commercial social media platforms.
Either it’s a blind spot In their research or an agenda so deliberate omission, but regardless it seems strange to talk about the disintegration of social media and even Mastodon but not what Mastodon is a part of.
But I agree the general themes are there - it’s basically talking about the impact of enshittification but without using the term.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As people grow tired of toxic and addictive platforms that undermine real social connection, this new wave of social-focused upstarts could end up producing a healthier online environment.
Major platforms such as Facebook have long abandoned their goal to “bring the world closer together” in favor of “profit-motivated and engagement-inducing designs” that keep us hooked and drive growth, Ben Grosser, an artist and faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, told me.
No matter how fun group chats and breakout social apps such as BeReal are, I’ve missed the borderless experience that large platforms offer — a place where I can discover viral content, expand my network, and participate in global conversations.
At its best, Steve Teixeira, the chief product officer at Mozilla, said that social media facilitated connection, regardless of geographic or temporal boundaries, and helps people stay informed, encounter novel ideas, and access vital services.
And experts have found that a collection of networks would “optimize itself solely for public good,” rather than fall into the pitfalls of traditional platforms — an unhealthy obsession with metrics and meaningless interactions.
It’s hard to predict the future, least of all when it comes to online services where new apps can go viral — and then fail — in a flash, but the breakup of monolithic social-media platforms and the rise of myriad new social experiences has felt like an urgent, long-overdue turn of events.
The original article contains 2,074 words, the summary contains 239 words. Saved 88%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
