What should the intent of social networks even be?

There's a lot of backlash, doubt, frustration and anger over what social media is today. Well, unless it's your source of self-validation for things you believe that are morally questionable. In that case, the socials are awesome for you. For years there were a lot of algorithmic tactics intended to keep you engaged longer, but the intent is simpler than that. The intent is to get as many ads in front of you as possible. What it doesn't do is anything even remotely social, or at least, not in a way that is analogous to any real-life behavior.

If we go back far enough on the Internets, message boards, or even the ancient Usenet stuff, are in many ways one of the earliest forms of what we might call social media. The intent here was to gather people who care about some niche thing a place to talk about it. It was shocking at the time how terrible some people would act in these communities, especially where they weren't moderated, but the upside far outweighed the noise. Much of my social foundation exists because of these boards, and it's part of the reason I maintain them today. I think that value potential still exists.

Also around the turn of the century, blogs started to become a thing. I still love that format (seeing as how you're reading one), because it's more than drive-by food porn or photos of your cat. There's room for nuance and more complex thoughts. There was also a ping-back mechanism that most of the major blogs implemented back in those days, where if you linked to another blog, there was a link back to yours. It facilitated some interesting conversations, and while spam was a problem, it was an amazing, decentralized thing that did not involve a single platform.

Then MySpace came around, and while it had a concept of "friends," it mostly was for self-promotion, especially in music circles. I went to a party once at a conference thrown by MySpace, where they were recruiting, and heavily convinced they were gonna take over the world. Hilarious. Friendster was a thing too, which is apparently being resurrected. This was before mobile was really a thing, so keep in mind that this was all desktop computer activity, with photos uploaded from dedicated digital cameras.

When Facebook started to get some traction, it was college-only, but the intent of it was mostly to find out who was single, and who was having an awesome time at a party doing awesome shooters. When it went to general release, it was still that, but for a good decade thereafter, I think it did a good job connecting people, or keeping them connected. From there on, it became about the algorithms, engagement and ads. Instagram seems to be headed that way now too.

So when you look back at that history, I'm not sure that we ever reached an ideal of what social networks could or should be. I tend to project my own ideals as those that everyone wants, but they probably don't. Still, what I think is the right intent includes:

• Keeping in touch with friends and what they're doing. This means they announce that they've changed jobs, or taking a vacation, and yes, sharing food porn and cats.
• Not seeing ads. That's a negative intent, but an important one. I understand that this means something that isn't free, but I don't see how else you get away from the ads.
• Chronological posts. I don't see any reason why you'd want to know more about things that happened days ago. And if you miss things, you miss things.
• Get in and out, no doomscrolling. If I have even a hundred "friends," I don't imagine that they're all posting a million things a day. If I need a time waster, I can do crosswords or Two Dots or literally anything that doesn't involve ads.
• No behavioral tracking, taxonomies or algorithms. The network doesn't need "insight" into me, it just needs to show me stuff from my friends.
• Privacy. Nothing is public, nor is it possible to make public. Either you're an accepted friend and can see what I post, or you're not.

That's a pretty short, straight forward list. Nothing has ever existed that I think purely can do all of this. I'd be willing to pay for something that did, even if it's of limited utility because not a lot of people I know are on it. I don't know what the appetite for people paying is, but it's probably not high.