I remember when Facebook opened beyond colleges vividly. I signed up the first day. I had a few friends who were in college, and a number of my former volleyball kids were also in college, so it was useful the first day. Then a few friends from my college days trickled in, as did a few coworkers. When I moved to Seattle in 2009, it became essential, and frankly easy to not completely lose contact with folks back in Cleveland. After that it was folks from Seattle and Cleveland when I moved to Orlando. Gen-X'ers for the most part seemed to enjoy the utility of it all. Obviously, things changed.
A lot of focus is put on the performative nature as a usage pattern for many folks, generally but not always sub-Gen-X people. The harm that usage and consumption may cause, especially among younger people, has become well studied. But things got extra weird when these public companies running the networks started chasing endless growth through constant engagement. That's the algorithms. They learn what you like, and show you more of that. This means that you see more ads, so they can make more money, but it also has the nasty side effect of radicalizing people. For others, they get so stuck in their bubble that it appeals to their worst tendencies. Tech-skeptic Boomers got in and frankly made it worse.
In 2020, amidst an election and a pandemic, the networks at least seemed to acknowledge their role in spreading disinformation, and the feds gave ample evidence that their algorithms were further being manipulated by foreign actors. This year, however, they pretty much said fuck it, picked sides, and here we are. That changes the math quite a bit. The negatives that I mentioned were already there, but once you throw mistrust on top, it starts to feel pretty bad. The only upside, ironic as it might be, is that it can still be a tool for organizing against all of the nonsense.
So if you crave the 2010 utility of Facebook, but already find less use for it given that you don't really see much of what your friends are doing, or the friends bailed, then what? The problem is that these networks are only useful if it's where your people are. With Facebook no longer pretending to care about "bad" content, a lot of folks are moving to Bluesky, which is definitely having a moment. It's a lot more mature than I thought in terms of product development, but it does lack the privacy control that made Facebook useful. When I say privacy, I mean controlling which humans see your stuff, since you can lock down your FB profile so that literally no one can see what you post. (The algorithms make privacy otherwise nonexistent.) Bluesky is intended to be public, which I'm not crazy about. I'm OK showing some of the things, and I do that on Instagram, but a lot of stuff is not for public consumption, it's friends only.
Where does that leave things? Not in a great spot. I could retreat completely to my personal blog, but all of the cross-pinging and conversation that happened on blogs in the old days doesn't work anymore. That's a bummer, too, because it was truly social and there were no walled gardens.
Have I prototyped a social app? Of course I have. I got as far as being able to post photos and text, and compose a feed that is the classic, chronological, friends-only thing. If I were writing high level requirements, that's what I'd want. No algorithms, no ads. It couldn't possibly be free, or at least, not forever, but who knows if anyone would pay for that sort of thing. Oh, it would also be a web app, so no more downloads and platform-specific implementations. And I think I would probably want to implement a Facebook import function, while you can still get all of the data.
I'd use it, but I don't know if invited friends would. I suppose if I'm that disenchanted with the established networks, and don't see friend stuff anyway, maybe it wouldn't even matter.
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