[CuriousCosmic]

> Social media started as tool to allow people to stay in touch after their time together came to an end and eventually evolved\merged with forums as a tool to bring people with similar interest together.

This actually isn't really true. It may be true for social media in it's current incarnation but the origin of social media, the bulletin board systems/BBS (and their progenitor the Community Memory) started as a means for hobbyists to share information and coordinate projects.

It would only be as BBS grew in popularity that they became a kind of digital public square/3rd place. Then with their decline, the graphical web/http based hobbyist forums (and eventually image boards) would rise repeating the pattern.

It would only be the modern incarnation of social media that would originate as an attempt to serve as a "digital rolodex for friends and family" but really out of all the incarnations of social media that would be a relatively short lived oddity before folding back into the hobbyist forums -> public square pattern.

[tmottabr]

But what is being discussed is social media current incarnation and that is exactly what i talking about. I even kind address your point when i said that it evolved\merge into forums, that were themselves an evolution of bulletin boards that in turn were evolution of older concepts.

But i don't see BBS or forums really as a digital public square anymore then current social media is. They were really silos were you would find people with similar interest, but was ultimately subjected to the will of the board owner or its moderators.

I see those more as an digital version of clubs then a public square.

Also the modern social media version of hobbyist forums\bulletin boards was also a short lived one and has being replaced by the addictive algorithm aimed at capturing our attention as much as possible that we have today.

I do not see anything in the past that could resemble what we have today, the closet parallel would be addictive drugs.

Surely some of the old community building aspects are still there in some platforms, but the biggest problem is that now we are seen a new generation of platforms being born from start aimed at the single goal of capturing our attention and get us hooked.