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.
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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.