Friendica

The social media platforms we once relied on for authentic connection are disintegrating. My ikigai—the reason I get up in the morning—is facilitating connection. But today’s major social media platforms—Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, et al.—are all owned by billionaires and tech bros who impose their political leanings on their users and/or seek to make massive fortunes from revenue streams such as ads and selling user information.

These monolithic platforms increasingly control what can be posted via opaque and ever-changing algorithms, while reducing or eliminating moderation of trolls and spammers. Bots abound, pouring AI-generated slop into users’ feeds. Though X is the most prominent example, Facebook has abandoned its fact-checking program and drastically reduced the reach of posts to followers, and platforms like LinkedIn have tuned their algorithms to reduce the reach of posts that include off-site links.

The dumpster fire will continue

Major social media platforms are a dumpster fire, with no quick fix. Users remain on these platforms due to their network effect advantage; i.e., their value increases as more users join. For example, though I find Facebook’s ethical choices increasingly repulsive, I still use the platform sparingly because it is the only online service that some friends and family use, and a few of its local and professional groups have no significant online competition.

A corollary of the network effect is that as networks grow they become full of strangers, less coherent, and harder and more expensive to moderate effectively. Large platforms also become attractive places for those who need to feel important by having many followers and who concentrate on broadcast communication rather than two-way connection.

If you, like me, are interested in authentic connection with people in ways you determine, unfiltered by secret algorithms constantly tuned to maximize revenue or political ideologies, the future is bleak.

Except…