ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman's blog

Slow social media

People often assume that I hate social media. And they'd be forgiven for believing that, since I am overtly critical of current social media platforms and the effects they have on individuals and society; and deleted all of my social media accounts back in 2019.

However, the underlying concept of social media is something I resonate with: Stay connected with the people you care about.

It's just that the current form of social media is bastardised, and not social at all. Instead of improving relationships and fostering connection, they're advertisement-funded content mills which are explicitly designed and continually refined to keep you engaged, lonely, and unhappy. And once TikTok figured out that short-form video with a recommendation engine is digital crack, all other social media platforms quickly sprang into action to copy their secret sauce.

Meta basically turned Instagram and Facebook from 'connecting with friends' into 'doom-scrolling random content'. Even Pinterest is starting to look like TikTok! They followed user engagement, but not the underlying preferences of their users. I posit that any for-profit social media will eventually degrade into recommendation media over time.

I don't think most people using these platforms understand that they are the product. Instagram isn't built for you. It's built for marketers. It's built for celebrities to capitalise on their audiences. It's built for politicians and their cronies to sway sentiment. It's built to be as addictive as possible, and to capitalise on your insecurity and uncomfortability.

Imagine that, society and politics are on the rocks all so a fitness influencer can sell you their "Abs in 30 days" training program.

These platforms are the quintessential poster child for late-stage capitalism.

Okay, now that we've established what the problems with current platforms are—what would a non-evil social media platform look like?

I'd love to see everyone running a blog, and subscribing to the people they care about via RSS. But unfortunately this doesn't scale since it requires effort to put your thoughts down in writing longer than 255 characters. I have many friends who don't even know I have a blog, or what an RSS reader is.

So while everyone blogging may be the ideal we can aspire to, let's design a hypothetical social media platform that takes the good aspects of current social media, while creating pro-social incentives.

The platform should be about:

The platform should NOT be about:

In my opinion, as soon as there is the ability for commercial interests to take hold, they will. The "follow" mechanism is a key part of that. I propose that instead of followers we should regress back to the "friend" or "connection" system where there is a symmetric relationship where both people have to agree to the connection. There is no good reason to have "followers" on a platform that is trying to improve relationships. "Following" is purely for egotistical or financial gain and breeds parasocial relationships.

I think there should also be a reasonable cap on the number of connections that can be made. Something like 300 friends sounds right. Any more than that and you're a collector, and not using the platform to foster connection.

This feature alone already removes 90% of the marketing interests in the platform. Do you want to make a connection, but are maxed out? You'll need to unfriend someone first.

The second necessary element would be a chronological feed with posts from your connections. This turns the platform from an engagement engine into a way to keep up with what everyone else is doing, but importantly, gives you a natural "end" to the feed when you start seeing posts you've already viewed. This way when you start scrolling there's an explicit stopping point.

Relatedly, pagination is more humane than infinite-scroll since it gives users a natural breathing point where they can decide whether they want to keep going. Infinite-scroll is such an obvious user-trap, and I view any website doing it as not having its user's best interests at heart.

And finally, there should be a reasonable cap on the number of times a user can post per day. Roughly 5 times per day feels like the upper threshold of what you can post while being intentional about what it is you're posting. This will keep the feed reasonably populated without one or two people completely overwhelming it.

The rest of the platform can be optimised to be as easy-to-use as possible. Something like a mixture between the old Instagram and Twitter, with comments and reactions. No reels or any other recommendation system to keep people engaged to death. And no analytics, since that would be optimising for reach and engagement instead of the stated goal of connection.

Do I expect a platform like this to succeed? Not by the traditional metrics of success. In the real world it would exist alongside the content mills, which are exciting by design and competing for attention. Could it work in niche groups, or amongst intentional people who are sick of the current platforms? Maybe.

Naturally, a project like this would have to be funded somehow, and unfortunately very few people are willing to pay $5 per month for software services, even if they use it every day. However, I suspect that a social media platform like this would be manageable enough that a small team could run it fairly cheaply and profitably if they're creative. Perhaps with nothing but donations.

Who will create this egalitarian social media? Not me, that's for sure. I already have my fair share of work moderating the Bear discovery feed, to the extent I've had to bring on a second moderator (hello Sheena!) to keep it clean of spam and other nasty things that free services on the internet attract.

That being said, I would love to see something like this. I'd love to be able to stay connected with friends and family abroad without having my attention sold to the highest bidder.

If anyone is working on something like this, I'd be happy to consult.