We cannot, it turns out, all just get along.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:16 AM on January 27 [14 favorites]

The question wasn¡¯t when a challenger to Twitter or Facebook might arrive but

aren't they "meta" now?
posted by HearHere at 7:17 AM on January 27

And what does this mean for social cohesion and consensus, both online and off?

Wait...Twitter fostered social cohesion and consensus? The tech titans' dream of uniting us into one big happy humanistic polycule was foiled by The Great Fracturing?
posted by kozad at 7:36 AM on January 27 [5 favorites]

Facebook (the social media platform) is still Facebook, the company changed its name bc that's what the pr flaks said to do I guess. See also google/alphabet. Or all the tobacco companies playing name games. It's Twitter that is no longer Twitter, but most people still call it that.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:37 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]

It turns into a thing like when Conway's Game of Life settles into a steady state of solid blocks and little twiddling things forever.
posted by jquinby at 7:38 AM on January 27 [10 favorites]

Maybe kind of? But no social network is a closed system; the networks are coupled together by people that experience and react to events in the real world. So the game of life we are in gets injections of noise, bigger at some moments than others, and that will impose a soft, probabilistic limit on the lifetime of any given steady state.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 7:58 AM on January 27 [2 favorites]

You end up with the world we had before. People have been forming socially self-selected groups since forever. The systemic shock of Twitter, etc. was trying to mash all those groups into a single stew.
posted by phooky at 8:02 AM on January 27 [25 favorites]

Hasn't the problem always been algorithms designed to boost engagement by promoting incendiary content coupled with a deliberate lack of functionality to filter in any meaningful way?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:13 AM on January 27 [22 favorites]

Isn¡¯t that ideal?

No, that's bothsidesism in this context. FFS.
posted by reedbird_hill at 8:28 AM on January 27

You end up with the world we had before. People have been forming socially self-selected groups since forever. The systemic shock of Twitter, etc. was trying to mash all those groups into a single stew.

I once saw Twitter likened to involuntary telepathy/mind-reading, and we have all those X-Men characters to help us understand the issue there.

I dropped Twitter years ago, and got accounts on Bluesky and Mastodon. I eventually got rid of them, too. Even with the favorable moderation, they replicated the things I liked least about Twitter: Once the clout-chasers and attention-farmers turned up in numbers, they hollowed out my follow lists, because people eventually just start reposting the hot takes instead of speaking for themselves. Turning off reposts just meant tumbleweeds and whichever photographers I was following.

Facebook is its own set of weird issues, but once I quit trying to control it and decided it was okay to miss a picture of someone's vacation, it became the "this two-year-old box of organic mac-n-cheese must be what's for dinner" of my social media diet. I do have an angry boomer conservative uncle but I think he and my angry boomer liberal mother have quietly agreed to an uneasy detente, so they both just spend their days inviting people to "Sassy Liberal Grammies" and "Wise Old School Gentlemen Sayings" meme groups and saying cryptic things about Jesus and gratitude that I assume have to do with unspoken regularity issues.
posted by A forgotten .plan file at 8:30 AM on January 27 [13 favorites]

I read this article a couple of days ago. What I think it overlooks is this diaspora isn't just about ideological differences. Some people are in real, physical and mental danger in some public spaces. They're not heading to safer spaces for any other reason other than survival. Until everyone understands that, this article is what you get.
posted by tommasz at 8:44 AM on January 27 [29 favorites]

Once the clout-chasers and attention-farmers turned up in numbers, they hollowed out my follow lists, because people eventually just start reposting the hot takes instead of speaking for themselves.

I don't know how it could be effectively implemented without introducing a host of other problems, but one you reach a hundred followers the platform should stop counting.

The very first thing people did when Facebook came to campus eons ago was send/accept as many friend requests as they could just so they could build the biggest list of followers.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:46 AM on January 27 [4 favorites]

I've never had a twitter, nor joined Bsky or mastadon.

I do still facebook a bit. Just so much garbage bot posts. If it's from "[Dog Breed] Lovers" with a caption of "Great Photography (emoji emoji)", or the dreaded "See more...", HIDE ALL. Kind of makes me feel I am fighting the good fight, in some little way. I did decide a while back to friend request all the people from my past who's name I recognize. Has been interesting.

I went to public grade school, then a private junior high school, and then back to public high school. And it is always weird to see overlaps between these two groups of people in the mutual friends popup. Also noticeable is that the people from the all-boys private school seem to have a large number of MAGA asshats, but I digress.

And their algorithm is so odd. Yes, I am watching the Reels of puppies. So you decide I want to read Snoopy cartoons? Lots of them? K...?
posted by Windopaene at 9:58 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]

And what does this mean for social cohesion and consensus, both online and off?

That it - along with equally important ideas, like 'boundaries" and "safety" - can now be defined by smaller groups of mutually invested people close to their communities and the realities of their lived concerns, rather than by people some distance removed from them, talking about theoretical principles with no skin in the game.
posted by mhoye at 10:03 AM on January 27 [4 favorites]

I've always preferred a community garden to a walled garden anyways.
posted by archimago at 10:39 AM on January 27 [3 favorites]

Honest question: does the silent majority avoid social media or simply lurk there? Does it matter if they are not also swing-state voters or whatever target demographic matters to ¡°elections¡± in your particular jurisdiction. I use air quotes only because most of us are captive to a minority of voters¡¯ whims.

I deactivated my FB and insta accounts a couple weeks back. I deleted Twitter/X the day the sale closed. I lurk a little on bsky/reddit/lnkd but mostly for work purposes. Zero regrets distancing myself from those services.
posted by simra at 11:28 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]

Is this a problem for us, or for advertisers?
posted by Selena777 at 11:53 AM on January 27 [12 favorites]

Honest question: does the silent majority avoid social media or simply lurk there?

I think most people lurk or only post stuff to people they know, but they are still being exposed to whatever posts the various algorithms send their way so even though they're only on a platform to stay in touch with friends they're still seeing posts that aren't that good for them.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:42 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: a politically homogeneous, self-governing commnity
posted by Sebmojo at 12:45 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]

I¡¯ve been thinking recently that the future of fandom is chatting with an AI of your favourite character, and after reading this article, I think that might be the future of social media as well.

Everything in the article seemed so old-fashioned¡ªthe people who want a return to early 2010s Twitter are suffering from the same nostalgia bug as those who pine for early 2000s LiveJournal. iPad babies turned TikTok teens are the future of social media and they¡¯re not going to run a Mastodon. Moderation? Claude sending memes to itself will come pre-censored. Anyway, the money behind Bluesky is so clearly fake, everyone¡¯s trying to get their bag before the clock runs out.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:54 PM on January 27

the company changed its name bc that's what the pr flaks said to do I guess.

It just reminds me of Philip Morris rebranding to The Altria Group or Imperial Tobacco becoming Imperial Brands they all have something to hide.
posted by Lanark at 1:18 PM on January 27

Ah yes, that question about Social Engineering that no one seems to be able to solve, ever. We are tribal, but we're constantly challenged on that. Garry Trudeau had a Doonesbury comic years ago about how all the Black students were protesting again. "What do they want this time?" President King asked his assistant. "Segregated dorms."
posted by Melismata at 1:55 PM on January 27

Everything in the article seemed so old-fashioned¡ªthe people who want a return to early 2010s Twitter are suffering from the same nostalgia bug as those who pine for early 2000s LiveJournal.

I read it more as very "classical Liberal," which gets no traction in left-lib/progressive/whatever circles, but seems to be the animating spirit behind all the "I didn't move right, the left abandoned me" heterodoxy entrepreneurs.
posted by A forgotten .plan file at 1:56 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]

aren't they "meta" now?

No, that would be journalistic malpractice. Its "Meta?", "Meta Platforms, Inc" or at the very least Meta with a capital 'M'.
posted by grokus at 2:52 PM on January 27

Yes, people are in considerable danger in public spaces.

But I think what we're ignoring is that the civil war has gone live, the rebels have seized the Presidential Palace, the Parliament, and the media, but we can't seem to stop trying to figure out how to win the next election when it's all too likely there won't really be one.
posted by jamjam at 3:24 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]

I gotta say, it's difficult to take the article seriously when the editors can't even spell "diaspora".
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:08 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

Also the fact that Jesse Singal is described this way really, really betrays the ideological biases of the author:

¡­a prominent journalist and podcaster who writes about trans healthcare in ways that some of the vocal trans users on the platform considered harmful.
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:10 PM on January 27 [9 favorites]

Their description of Gamergate is highly suspect as well, and made me think that the author really doesn't understand what's at stake here.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:48 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]

, but we can't seem to stop trying to figure out how to win the next election when it's all too likely there won't really be one.

Team Trump recently removed all funding for "ensuring election security" from the dept of homeland security's budget which seems like an admission to me.

Everyone who investigated his scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election has now been fired as of yesterday.

Supreme Court says he can break as many laws as he wants.

Conspiracy theories going around that Elon Musk can alter vote tallies via Starlink somehow.

Even if they do all their vote fixing completely legally and our in the open (see: removing voters from rolls) we'd be in trouble. As it is the only way out of this I can see if for Trump to somehow piss off the military generals enough for them to throw him under the bus if and when enough sleeping voters magically wake up to what's happening to try to kick him out. Which I'm not optimistic will happen either.
posted by subdee at 4:57 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]