maybe we should all just go back to using messenger pigeons.

[raisedbymoogles]

twitter has been set on fire and fallen into the swamp. most other social media are alt-right radicalization machines. tumblr retains its stranglehold on fandom for now, but its owners appear to be determined to drag it to oblivion and/or behind the woodshed.

DW and PF are... here. but let's be honest, if people wanted to be here in any great numbers they would be.

what will the next social media ecosystem look like? i know what i want in my interacting-with-people-on-the-interwebs experience, but i'm weird and off-putting, so i'm probably not the best model for social media engagement. i know 'chronological timeline populated (only!) with people i follow, privacy/engagement controls, runs on desktop' are must-haves for the General Audience, but those are Solved Problems even if most social media owners would Really Rather Not. no, there's gotta be something else, right? some wow-factor feature that pulls people's interest. something that either brings back a feature we didn't know we were missing or comes up with something new. not a gimmick, a genuinely new way to reach people.

this is the point where I reveal my Grand Idea for Social Media's Next X-Factor. IF I HAD ONE

idk. i told my partner today that i wished we could just make our own internet. let the bots advertise to each other while all the real people wander into the digital woods to learn and play and teach and archive and all the stuff that a global communications network is actually GOOD and USEFUL for.

sadly, i can't crochet undersea Internet cables. ;P

Comments

[playswithworms]

Chrocheted cables sound good to me! Also playing in the digital woods by our ownselves while the bots all try to sell each other stuff. Sigh.

[raisedbymoogles]

welp, someone bring me some of them there fiber-optic cables and I'll see what I can do. ;P

[maureenlycaon_dw]

I like that idea a lot, myself. ;)

[raisedbymoogles]

there's still some good activity on the tumbls, esp. compared to DW/PF. It's replaced Twitter as my 'mindless scrolling' stress toy* since I deleted my account. But I still wish fandom would move on to something else.

*As in, a toy that causes stress.

[megpie71]

As I said on Tumblr not long ago, we missed a chance back in the early 2000s, at the beginning of Web 2.0, when we were just starting to see how useful social media was for everyone. Back before the internet turned into the commercialised mess it is now, we should have gone to the various governments around the world and said "nationalise this" - make social media into the genuinely public common space it needs to be (owned by the public, for the public).

Instead, we're stuck with the situation at present, where the corporate world is just starting to realise the internet in general, and social media in particular, isn't some kind of giant money box which will pour rivers of cash into their laps if they just shake it right. Most of social media isn't profitable (as the elongated muskrat is discovering to his chagrin); much of it doesn't even break even. In order to make money out of building a space where people can just talk to one another, you need to surround the space with an incredibly intrusive level of surveillance, you need to gather huge amounts of data about your users, and you need to have a market to sell that data to for big bucks (this is the model Facebook, and indeed all of Meta's offerings, run on). Or, alternatively, you need to have a product you're selling, and you need your users to be buying the product as a token to allow them to chat to others for a limited time (the coffee-shop model - a lot of online news sites will use this).

As far as the corporate world is concerned, the big problem with social media is it encourages a lot of online vagrancy - people occupying space without paying for it.

I believe we will eventually wind up in a space where social media is nationalised, but at this point, it will be through the corporate players threatening to take their bats and balls and go home, unless governments cover their losses and pay them to keep things running.

[raisedbymoogles]

idk how that would've gone in Australia, but over here 'nationalize the Internet/social media' was always going to be a complete non-starter. I think there were suggestions about making the Internet a public utility here and there, but anything that hints at 'somebody getting something they didn't pay for' makes the conservatives over here scream "SOCIALIZMZ!!!!!" until they pass out. -_-

[greyliliy]

Man, the Twitter situation has been the worst. It was such a nice central hub, and now everyone has flown off to the winds. Makes me glad I created a Dreamwidth...even if I'm not active. At least I can follow people when I see them move over here. XD

[raisedbymoogles]

::wavewaves:: also, DW's small enough that advertisers don't care about us.

[greyliliy]

Truth.

Now if I only remembered to check it. XD

[maureenlycaon_dw]

Funny thing, in The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson has them doing just that -- YourLock, iirc. It uses Bitcoin-style encryption and lets you do pretty much everything on it, from handling your bank account to social-media-style posting.

Robinson always has put a little too much faith in technical solutions, but the idea has some merit. A truly secure Internet app that is secure against government, corporate, and spam intrusion would be gold.

[raisedbymoogles]

i'm sure it would be, but the question 'so how do we pay for server space/energy?' comes up eventually, and inevitably trying to answer it leads to 'well some kind of community funding-' and whoops you've just invented government again.