Does anyone else feel like social media has stopped being social?
I've been thinking a lot about how social media has changed over the years.
Originally, the idea was pretty simple: connect with people, share things, discover communities, and have conversations.
But somewhere along the way, the focus shifted.
Today, almost everything seems to revolve around reach, engagement, impressions, followers, and algorithms. People are incentivized to post whatever gets the most attention, while platforms are incentivized to keep us scrolling for as long as possible.
And then there's the growing number of bots, AI-generated content, fake engagement, and accounts that aren't necessarily interested in genuine conversations.
It sometimes feels like we're all participating in a giant competition for attention instead of actually connecting with each other.
A small team I'm part of has been asking a question:
What would social media look like if we designed it around genuine human interaction instead of maximizing engagement?
We're actually working on a new decentralized social platform based on that idea.
We're not claiming we can solve every problem. But we believe that if you start from scratch, you can make fundamentally different decisions about how a social platform should work.
I'm curious what others think.
If you could change one fundamental thing about today's social media platforms, what would it be?