Melbourne

I think social media is something that will inevitably have a cycle of growth and collapse. Small groups tend to attract a more creative people that want to make something new. When they are successful that attracts lots of other users and the groups grow. Once they reach a certain size the nature of the group inevitably changes. Maintenance starts to overtake creating, and as it gets bigger the content becomes primarily quick & easy content and things created by those with vested interests (advertisers etc). At that point the type of person who created the initial small site tend to be looking for somewhere else where they have room to create, and the content on the large site becomes more and more recycled content and advertising. Which means the users start to look around for something different - and find some of the things the people who have left earlier have started to create. At which point the cycle starts again.

We may be seeing the end of less savvy user, which tbh is a good thing.

Seeing how younger people use social media is actually quite interesting.

My kids use it to share funny crap with their friends. Pretty much what email was back in the late 90's early 00's.

They don't really use for posting or communicating. Just sharing.

Their interactions with friends are video calls and meetups.

Personally I think we're just reaching a critical mass with the traditional way social media platforms and advertisements work. The status quo is that all these platforms spring up, get millions of potentially billions in capital from a bunch of rich people who want to be rich, the initial mandate is just "grow grow grow", making a return isn't relevant, as long as you can grow fast enough you keep getting more money

Then eventually you can't do that anymore, you can't get more funding faster than you use it. And now the rich people who gave you money initially are starting to demand it back. All your conventual lons are due back as well. So now you need to monetize. If you make your platform a paid platform, you'll lose a lot, potentially even most, of your user base. And that would make the rich people sad. If you stay free, you need to make your money back from ads.

The issue is, no amount of money is ever enough. The rich people all want to get richer. So even once you've paid back your debts, you still want to make your own money too

Another key part of it is that if it's structured like that, you will always inherently have problems keeping someone happy. Because your users are not your customer, they're you're product. But unlike a conventional product, your users need to be kept happy as well. It's not like a normal product where you just chuck 'em on the shelf and you're off to the races. If you don't keep your products happy, they walk off the shelf and now you have nothing to sell to your customers

I'm hoping this Federation stuff will help with all that, but I do have some worries about how these servers plan on making enough money to not need to shutdown. Donations are good, but can you rely on just donations and nothing else to keep you running? I mean, look at Wikipedia. They get some funding from various organisations and have decently large cash reserves, and we've all seen how aggressively they beg for money

(Edit: I didn't post this multiple times, did I? Jerboa threw a tantrum when I tried to post it)

I think social media has been on a gradual decline for a while tbh. Various platforms have done some awful things like algorithms, advertising bombardment, inciting hatred and violence, political interference, security concerns, child safety, stupid decisions from the powers that be, etc, and have ruined the experiences for users. People are right to question "the system" as it stands.

Without a serious rethink of what social media needs to be and how it can best integrate into people's lives (unlike the constant brain-fart ideas that have morphed it into what we see today), the decline into irrelevance will only accelerate.

Raven pretty much summed it up I reckon but to add a note for a possible future here: as the fediverse grows with more trolls, bots and capitalist interests it will turn into feuds and flame wars and brigading between instances and the admins will be pulling hair trying to figure out who to stay federated with. ??

I work a lot in and on social media (unfortunately lol) so I’ve been watching the trajectory with interest. One thing I have absolutely noticed is more niche, focused spaces growing for creators. Substack for writers, for example.

I do think fb, Instagram, Twitter etc will always hang around. Like roaches in an apocalypse. They are designed to be intentionally addictive after all. But they will lose a lot of power and won’t be what they once were.

It's been interesting seeing the recent stuff that's happened. Like there's Mastodon as a Twitter replicate, Lemmy for Reddit, Tumblr is still Tumblr (a lot of Twitter and Reddit users migrated to Tumblr recently, it's a lot of fun over there. We still don't allow porn, but if it's artistic like a photograph or in a movie it's allowed but there are mature filters for like nusity, gore, etc).

There's a MySpace replicate called HeySpace. It's actually pretty cool, as someone who was on MySpace as a scene/emo kid.

But yeah it seems social media is imploding. I'm curious what the future of the Internet will be.