The Last Days of Social Media

This The problem is not just the rise of fake material, but the collapse of context and the acceptance that truth no longer matters as long as our cravings for colors and noise are satisfied. Contemporary social media content is more often rootless, detached from cultural memory, interpersonal exchange or shared conversation. It arrives fully formed, optimized for attention rather than meaning, producing a kind of semantic sludge, posts that look like language yet say almost nothing.

Yet the author concludes that this isn't what we want. I think it is actually what the average person wants. They're not thinking, why should they have to think. They read half a headline and share the article as if it's truth. If this is what social media users are asking for and it's actually mind-bogglingly easy to monetize, that's what we're going to get.

I think the view of this article is too optimistic to be believable.

It would be nice if social media fractured into a web of small communities shepherded by influencer-come-content-creators, a bit like finding a ncie pub in your local area with like minded people.

But the majority will still be in McDonalds, a la FaceBook/Instagram/Reddit

Edit: Also, further than this, I think the article is completely overlooking just how much the autocratic regimes and companies love the influence they have over us from social media. And overlooks just how much they will try to cement social media as the one stop shop to influence public opinion.

Several years ago around the time when this trend was beginning, I had a desktop plugin for chrome specifically for Facebook that blocked all sponsored and all suggested content. So what remained was posts from my friends list, and posts that they had liked.

It was an absolute 'night and day' difference

Haven't found a good one for mobile though since I switched to brave (the browser).