The welcome death of social media
The enshitifcation of the internet hit social media hard in recent years. I am old enough to remember the raw excitement of MySpace, Tumblr, Twitter, and Live Journal. Each platform was thrilling, new, and fresh. It felt like we were conquering a new world. And I am not the only one who remembers these things apparently because the hosts of a recent Search Engine Podcast episode titled “The Fediverse Experiment” also pined for the good old days of social media.
But everything has changed. It’s all become…gross. Fake news on Facebook and other platforms affecting election results, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Russian bots taking over Twitter, the link between Instagram and mental health issues, and Ai slop ruining social media platforms in general. Just to name a few. It feels like it’s getting worse instead of better.
And it all leaves me wondering whether anyone cares anymore. Does anyone want to try and make social media better?
Decentralized social media is a possible answer, but only if people use it
I stumbled upon Mastodon years ago, even before Twitter fell into the hands of a psychopath. I loved the idea of federated social media but was disappointed by the lack of engagement on the site. No one I knew was on there and activity was minimal and very tech-oriented. People said it was "too complicated” and it kind of was. I would go there occasionally, but days would pass before new content was added.
I recently got back into Mastodon after the hosts of Search Engine and Hard Fork launched their own experiment and started their own Mastodon server, theforkiverse.com. The podcast episode about launching this Mastodon server did help me understand Mastodon a little better, and rekindled my desire to be a supporter of decentralized social media. But it’s quiet over in “The Forkiverse” and I rarely see new posts.
Bluesky has finally taken off and that is actually pretty good. Not as active as Twitter was back in the day, but active enough to be engaging. I check it a few times a day. Enough news outlets have ventured on there to make it informative.
There was a small glimmer of hope when Threads finally integrated with the Fediverse, but this integration has proven to be somewhat lackluster and not particularly good in my experience, as it comes with a lot of limitations. Meanwhile, Threads, like every Meta platform, has been inundated with bot and troll accounts and Ai slop, making it a very not fun place to be.
All of this decentralization solves a fundamental problem with social media and ownership, but social media only works if that's where people go. And the people aren't there.
Maybe we are just over social media
The lack of energy around decentralized social media had me wondering whether we were just over social media in general. I am the parent of a tween and around a lot of tweens and, interestingly, they seem to have very little appetite for "traditional" social media in general. High schoolers use SnapChat, but the cohort coming up just behind them seems to be over it all. Kids communicate mostly in more intimate group messaging/texts. Many parents are not letting their kids on social media, but the kids also aren't asking for it, which I and other parents have found really interesting. It has lost the "cool" factor.
And even among my millennial/gen x friends, the numbers of people who regularly post to social media has dwindled. I don't use Facebook or Instagram much at all anymore, and just check old accounts once a month or so. The apps are gone from my phone. This wasn't some conscious decision, they just become really uninteresting to me. I recently check to see if my friends were posting, and it turns out they too were posting sparingly if at all.
What I have found is that, like my tween, I am using messaging more and more to stay connected with people. Photos I might have shared on social media 10 years ago are now shared with friends and family over text. Part of this is an effort to be more privacy conscious about what I put out there, even to my locked-down private accounts. But it's also about being more intentional with what I share.
For me, the allure that social media once held is gone. Like all trends, it had its moment, and now we have moved on.
