| I actually strongly disagree with this. This is how many social media sites have failed. I don't know if alternative social media can ever scale as large as Reddit. Tildes.net and Lemmy both have similar activity to Hacker News and I'd consider them both "successful." The truth is that Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, etc are not websites used to drive connections between human beings; they're media machines meant to create ad distribution channels. And that's what users want. When someone uses Instagram, they don't want to see their friends vacation photos - they want to see Cardi Bs latest post. Meta attaches ads to that interaction and that's how they drive revenue. When someone uses Reddit, they aren't seeing what their neighbor has to say - they're consuming a long flowing rage bait story or a web comic. Sure, there are smaller, niche communities but that isn't the bulk of the site traffic. And, honestly, content is addictive. I'm personally not on Reddit to make friends or deepen my connection with other humans. I'm there to scroll through memes and cat pictures. I think that smaller social media sites fail because they don't emphasize media generation and distribution. That reframing still presents difficult problems to solve but I feel like that simple perspective pivot helps with growth. Like, if you wanted to take the "OG" Reddit approach to bootstrapping a social media site you could just programatically generate massive amounts of fake content. Rage bait stories, product placement, etc. Just firehose as much media to drive engagement until you get actual human beings to take part. That is is growth is what you want. It's arguable whether hyperscaled social media platforms actually make society better or individuals happier. |
I think most social media/networks now are terrible for keeping in touch with people we want to hear from. I was listening to a podcast with the musician Zedd and he mentioned that in the golden days of Facebook, he could post that he was doing a show in Toronto (or any city) and every person in Toronto who followed the Zedd Facebook page would come see him. Nowadays. he could do a post about being in Toronto and his Toronto fans will be like, "wait, why didn't I know you were in Toronto? I totally would've gone!"
Ironically, I've been enjoying IG now because I have PIECES as my place to share memories. I went to Coachella and magically IG started recommending me a ton of cool Coachella content. I open my IG now and it's a ton of World Cup content. Last month it was all Knicks content. Yet when I posted about PIECES on my Facebook, neither my aunts, uncles, or cousins saw that their family member created something he was proud of. I reached out by DM to tell them about it.
This is what happens when social platforms get to use ad revenue to fund their moon shots. All they have to do is turn on more ads to get the needed capital to fund their AI and -verse bets. As another user pointed out, The Social Contract we published isn't foolproof as a basis to assure our members that PIECES will be any different than incumbent social networks. But it's certainly a start.