This place isn't the same anymore, let's go somewhere else

I’ll admit that I’m a fan of social media. There is something about the serendipity of interactions, the content, and sometimes the pure silliness. Twitter has been my main site for the past few years alongside LinkedIn and Instagram. But in the recent months, for reasons there, has been renewed interest to try out other platforms. I reactivated my mastodon account, managed to get an invite for BlueSky and am having mild FOMO about threads (okay, pretty intense FOMO for the first few days). And these experiences have changed the way I think about social media.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

The main problem with any new site is that you need to figure out who to follow and reconnect with people you already know. It is pretty tedious, because most sites have naturally no interest in supporting you to easily migrate off to another site. The least common denominator seems to be giving access to your address book, but that’s something I almost never do because, well, email addresses are a bit too sensitive and it doesn’t really match up with the people I’m connected with on social media.

This whole process is also still quite manual, or at least I found the usual onboarding processes not satisfactory. Usually they let you choose from a set of very broad categories (like “Tech”, “Politics”) and populate your feed with accounts that I often found too mainstream and too general. It’s a hard problem that’s not only specific to social media. On music apps I never look at what’s trending because musical tastes are too broad and I seem to just not be a fan of what the majority of people likes.

Taking a step back, I find it actually pretty surprising that the process is still so manual and that algorithmic feeds aren’t better. This whole process of manually curating who you follow by making hundreds of individual follow/unfollow decisions over months till you have a good feed may make sense in terms of getting you hooked on the app (sunk costs), but it also feels quite outdated. Maybe it is specific to text as a medium, because Instagram and TikTok have shown that it is definitely possible to create an interesting feed for video.

But especially on Twitter, algorithmic feeds have a bad reputation because it was never clear who they are for, and since Musk took over at Twitter, it seems to be mostly to get people to subscribe to Twitter Blue so they get boosted on the algorithmic feed.

BlueSky has some interesting ideas, because they want to build a marketplace of algorithmic feeds so that you can pick the feed that you want. Currently it is mostly specific views of your feed, like “Mutuals” but technically it could support all kinds of algorithms.

Some examples of algorithmic feeds available on BlueSky.

The other thing that I realized is how different the various sites “feel” and that made me rethink what the whole point actually is. It never was fully clear what the right metaphor is. Twitter likes to see itself as the “global town square” and that’s sort of true, but now that I’ve been to several different “global town squares,” I’m getting a different impression.

Each of the sites has a different vibe, even if you are following a similar set of people, and each sites features different “attractions” (in terms of content that ends up in your timeline.) Especially like Musk took over, Twitter has been a weird place. Elon took it to himself to do something ever week or so that becomes the talk of the town. From firing two thirds of Twitter’s employees, to blocking the accounts of journalists, to the rebranding, to the cage fight with Zuckerberg, … Some people try to ignore it, and push content as usual, but others (me included) become more and more sarcastic every day.

Mastodon always felt different, especially after the big exodus from Twitter. There is a bit less drama, more personal content and actual discussions. At the same time it always felt to me that everyone is slightly burned from the experience on Twitter.

BlueSky again felt different, with an initial rush of people who were happy to be off Twitter and trying out all kinds of things and having a good time, including enjoying early bugs like the now infamous “hell thread.” But as the community on BlueSky grew, people became more concerned about the kind of people that joined and about an increase in online abuse.

By the way, the online abuse and harassment is another area where I feel we’re taking still a much too manual approach. Sites are trying to fight spam and bot accounts, but other than that you’re left with individually blocking or flagging people.

This reminds me a bit of how we fought email spam in the olden days. The problem isn’t solved yet, but it has gotten so much better. Compared to the early 2000s deluge of Viagra spam, the occasional spam email is really nothing. I am aware of filter bubbles and all that, but still some more algorithmic support for resolving issues online would be great. Or maybe even better, a marketplace of protective algorithms to your liking!

Photo by Richard Tao on Unsplash

So social media sites are maybe less like global town squares but more like bigger venues, or a smaller bar, or a theater, or maybe some streets in the old town where there are artists in the street.

What I like about this idea is that we could have an offering of social media sites for different kinds of topics, vibes, and people, instead of trying to suck everything into one big site. Joining a new site should be like trying out a new bar, and your basic connections should be independent of this, just when you enter a bar and you see an old acquaintance and you walk over to them and say “fancy I’d meet you here!”

The closest we had for this was reddit with its many different communities with individual rules and guidelines, moderators and cultures. Twitter increasingly seems like that mega venue that got redecorate by the new management and people are still going there out of habit, although nobody likes what the place has turned into.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could decide to move with your friends to some other place, that probably looks a bit more homely, or something else. And wouldn’t it be great if people could set up new venues like they open a new cafe and try out new ideas for creating spaces where people like to flock online?

I don’t know about you, but to me this seems like an interesting idea, and an idea that would require to rethink social media in general and open protocols like ActivityPub in particular which have so far been modeled more on a global model like Twitter, or built their own extensions on top.

How I read ActivityPub, I think it could represent these independent accounts and your core follower group and build something that could move in and out of venues.

However how mastodon is using ActivityPub, it is both the venue and the account identity at the same time. And ideally activities within a venue would remain private, but you could get activity notifications from your pals like “Chris has joined DataEngHub and talked with 35 people today.” A bit like Twitter Spaces are announced right now.

Could be interesting!