Social media doesn't have to be a force for evil

There is a sense of malaise in society that was nicely encapsulated in an article in the Financial Times written by Cory Doctorow titled ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything (paywall). The article outlined how Facebook came about, enticed people from MySpace by promising no surveillance or creepy ads, then told the advertisers they could target people based on all the data they shared, and then turned on the advertisers to extract the most amount of value. The result, ever more random posts in your feed, grumpy advertisers, and people slowly sharing less and turning to smaller curated groups in WhatsApp.

The social media platforms thrive by demanding our attention, as that is the foundation of the business by getting us to generate content, and the attention means more exposure to advertisements. It has also created anxiety in the younger members of society, and indeed having an impact on their mental health

Hate and division are quickly stoked by reposting, liking, and commenting as the posts with the highest activity are then fed by the algorithms as an indication of engagement. Engagement is good for the platforms as it leads to more time spent on the app and thus more exposure to advertisements. Bad for the user as the more contentious content is promoted, thus stoking more division and hate.

Image manipulation was once the preserve of specialists with expensive equipment, now a smartphone has a sophisticated battery of tools to help produce the images that people think they need to show to the world (and garner likes, reposts and (nice) comments. A world of no imperfections and blemishes as a syrupy feed, or one of gruesome distortions, freaks, shock to titillate and scandalize.

Hope: There is a better world to look forward to

What if we had a platform that had no algorithm that was needy and manipulated us? What if we didn't need alerts and check our feeds constantly?

Lets begin with a chronological order of information, no weight to important people, no preference to premium members, no priority to outrage, narcissistic posts.

That is a nice dream but how would it work if millions of people around the world had something to say? We tag our posts, and get creative, perhaps with a little help from AI? We narrow down what we want to consume, not what the algorithm chooses to serve us. Perhaps I want to hear from a few people that I respect, catch up on gossip on my favourite football team, see what is happening in my local town, district or area, follow that niche rap scene, I can do all this by creating custom lists of tags.

A feed that informs, and then the content disappears after 14 days, along with no liking, reposting, sharing or commenting will lead to spontaneity. We can be a bit more unguarded, safe in the knowledge that the throw away comment made years ago doesn't resurface and bite you.