[stickyricky]

I think this is both true and untrue.

Screamy and thirsty seem to be innate to most (important) human discussions. So we can throw those out. They're irrelevant to the platform problem if the platform didn't create them (amplification is not relevant either in my mind).

So then, did users "choose" censored, algorithmic ones. Technically... but I think the nature of the censoring and the algorithms changed. It went from pulling spam and porn to pulling "harmful" content. The algorithm went from "WHERE user_id IN ..." to "curation".

I don't think those things are necessarily bad or evil. But these things started as open platforms to connect everyone. Now they're reverting to "communities" and people are adapting. People are forming "communities" on different "platforms".

The whole social media marketplace is so muddled and ripe for disruption. Network effects are bogus. Its just an excuse incumbents and academics use to rationalize their dominance post hoc. Twitter, Facebook, Parler, the rest will fail and fail fast with the right alternative.