Nothing is ever pushed on me by the platform, so the whole experience doesn't become combative. That does mean though that each user has to do some work finding others they like, and that can take some time. But that also weeds out those that just want to be spoonfed content, which is a plus.

The last three years on there have been some of the most wholesome social media interactions I have had in the last 25 years.

Now it's just a platform for content mills. Producer to consumer.

Social media was peer to peer and it's dead.

At first I was not sure if the article really means exhaustion of the user, but then it says things like

"people scroll not because they enjoy it, but because they don’t know how to stop".

Sure, social media is a big waste of time, like gambling is a waste of money and drugs are a waste of health (and money), but do any of these feel "exhausting" to to user?

"Regret" comes to mind, maybe "shame". I think if platforms were exhausting to a significant number of people they were not that successful.

The point where social media failed was when the government agreed, at the behest of the companies, that platforms aren't liable for what is published there. So it has allowed a flood of inflammatory accusations that make it hard to find the individual responsible, where it would be easier to just take the platform to court like you would a paper, or a TV channel.

It makes it overall sound like the author's metric of liveliness is the same if disguised metric of being big, which ultimately drove the other huge players to the state they're talking about.

IMHO it would be awesome to have again sane, SOCIAL-media. Probably with the correct regulation it could be done… And the current SM platforms could use the regulation as well (force viewing only what one follows, make it transparent like other media - i.e. if someone has more than 10k "followers" it's just a media so put same requirements: full ID disclosure and having to respond to the takedowns immediatelly…)

I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts, what would a social media built for nuanced, meaningful interaction look like? Could there be such a thing?

That we bemoan sub-industries of media, rather than notice the system effects across it is suspicious.

“… if we say that linguistic structure "reflects" social structure, we are really assigning to language a role that is too passive ... Rather we should say that linguistic structure is the realization of social structure, actively symbolizing it in a process of mutual creativity. Because it stands as a metaphor for society, language has the property of not only transmitting the social order but also maintaining and potentially modifying it. (This is undoubtedly the explanation of the violent attitudes that under certain social conditions come to be held by one group towards the speech of others.)” Excerpts from Halliday Language and Society Volume 10

The feed was honestly the beginning of the end. It turns people from actor of their experience to mindless consumer.

https://youtu.be/kLyuNo3vEuQ?t=346

AI videos as propaganda. In this clip, the guy can be seen passing through a missile transport railing.

300K views.

The internet is flooded with slop and rage-bait on purpose. So filled as to be unusable, like a firehose of shit. So in there comes a role if "editor" whose job it is (you pay them) to only give you, well not even what's "true", rather what reflects your world view. So which editor you have becomes a factor in how you live, where your educated, your status.

It will be interesting to see if something as explicit as editors arise.

I will say this, if you stay off Facebook and some of the other big social sites for a while, it is like a madhouse when you glance back

As a personal project, I built an extension to create my own little architecture of intention. It introduces a 20-second pause before I enter distracting sites, and during the pause, it nudges me with a positive micro-habit, like fixing my posture or taking a deep breath.

It's called The 20s Rule (Chrome/Firefox) if anyone else finds that idea useful.

I tried to unhook pretty much for the past 15 years as I sensed that it basically doesn't serve me. If I would summarize the one primary cause for my inability to do it is the following - the belief that consuming content online is better for my own being than learning to manage my monkey mind.

I mean any content - from scrolling dumb instagram and facebook feeds to factory making process videos on youtube and streamers playing online games, political debates etc.

The problem is not consuming content on social media, but doing it reactively, excessively.

What helps with unhooking is basically wisdom and experience because how to do it when pretty much everybody is doing it?

Realizing that entire social media world is just incredibly fucking corrupt. Like omg corrupt. It's the epitome of corruption, starting with CEOs themselves.

Last week I've had situation where the person I knew who has professional instagram profile with +10k and runs business there just went fucking nuts. Instead of focusing on working on herself she decided to double down on her narcisism and went mental. Episode, however this is where it leads.

I am just happy that I can see it better and better and step into the right direction - away from social media.

PS. I removed X account few months ago, oh my, what a relief!

i guess it goes back to the Dunbar's Number, but on steroids. on the other hand, too much of anything turn from good to bad so it's not unexpected result either way.

SM in its current form is truly a cancer on society. i can't say IG is that much better, but at least i can sort of curate what i want to see and i still see photos from friends and such and just random ads. i know it's just pointless scrolling for a few mins. FB truly is one of those pull you into the echo chamber to tell and show you how to think and it only took a few minutes. i don't even know what years of that does to you.

anecdotally, most people my age already left for other pastures. the ones left there are largely those who joined up to connect back when FB was actually useful and are now around for the ragebait.

It never felt authentic to me. It always felt like a computer algorithm to create unnatural echo chambers at the full blast of a firehose.

Politically, social media lately has fractured into ideological spaces. I go on bluesky or truth social or X or a certain subreddit to keep up with the politics as filtered through my tribe.

A lot of people opt out of these spaces because of the huge amount of political content and the lack of nuance in discussion. But it also radicalizes the people who stay as they get their sides view of the political conflicts of the day. And they get addicted to winning arguments for their side.

It used to be that Twitter revolved around whatever Trump did. Now people go online to find a little club they can kanoodle and bemoan how their side is the ultimate victim. And people will justify a lot of horrible things if they think they’re the victim.

The essay also neglects what is possibly the largest part of a solution: systems to guarantee authenticity of users and user claims...

A social media user shouldn't have to wonder if the brain surgeon giving them medical tips actually is a high school dropout, or the fellow Parisian sounding the alarm on French politics actually is a 12 year old Quebecer, or the new fan DM'ing them about their music actually is the same psychopath who online-stalked them two years ago, etc.

Social media isn't going to die. It badly needs a mechanism for users to filter out bad information.

Because unifying everything down to a single one dumbed us down and gave unwarranted control to fewer and fewer people on what we may listen to, what we may write, what we may photograph, what we may share. And how and where and why we do it.

(notwithstanding that this would allow to significantly enrich the affordance of each device/appliance, relative to its use, rather than just having everything only tactile on a screen made of glass and 2 buttons).

I'm planning an app where people are forced to talk to each other and learn more about each other, if they do not they are banned from the platform.

Going on Tinder to gather likes and never talk to anyone should be forbidden.This is the issue with social sites, they make it as generic as possible.

bet a social media without likes, organized in circles, would be way less toxic.

This not to mention the interesting figures it lets me directly follow and the shared interest groups it lets me find.

Is social media a complex and vast thing with its many pitfalls and flaws? Of course it is. The corporate giants that run much of it have some very disgusting habits of passive aggressive manipulation of their users, and grossly parasitic dark patterns of surveillance behavior.

Nonetheless, under and around all of that, there's also a tremendous amount of practical human good being created by so much previously impossible connection between millions of family members, friends, loved ones and people who share things in common. I refuse to throw that baby out with the bath water as some seem to propose.

Political manipulation, factionalism and ideological bickering have always been a part of human culture, for at least as long as we've had written words and means of spreading them. Could anyone have expected any differently to emerge from the massively democratizing landscape of social platforms, which let literally anyone communicate their own two cents of thought to places and context where anyone else at all might instantly see them and respond? Of course not, but to focus only on that is almost elitist in its implied notions of shutting up the masses because they don't communicate and debate "correctly" (even if many of them are indeed stupidly influenced by all kinds of interests, whithin and outside of social media).

I feel like the core problem is that the platform just die out in time on their own. It was Facebook's issue for years and years now, and such a fate will come to others, too - if only because people who used these platforms eventually statistically grow up and realize they have better stuff to do, and influx of new generations is limited.

Then the generation and promotion of trash is just a symptom in order to hide the fester underneath for as long as possible.

What it doesn't mean is that social media will necessarily die in time; I expect that new platforms and methods will take over, as Discord and federated blogs mentioned in the post do. The reason being that the youngest generations still have attention to spare and social needs to be met. Further, as my generation is the last one to experience the wonders of digital disconnect in their childhood, the ones to come are already born into world where certain phenomenons outlined here are normalized.