New social media sites are sort of like teenage pimples: one day it's not there, and the next it just appears, and even if you kind of hate it, you know it ain't leaving for awhile.
We're in an incredibly rare spot right now where we know exactly what's coming around the corner. We know we're going to look in the mirror in the morning and see a huge red zit on our foreheads, and that zit is going to look an awful lot like "Twitter but not Twitter." Now that Twitter has imploded into one huge orgy of Elon stans, there's a vacuum in the market for a new text-based, thought-capturing social media site to soon fill, and while that plug could be something like Mastodon or another ActivityPub-based newcomer, more likely than not it will be Meta's teased Threads app.
We've all seen how Instagram became the place for people to hate their bodies and Facebook became the place for people to hate the other political party and Twitter became the place for people to hate anyone who doesn't own crypto. But I like to believe we're able as species to learn from our mistakes and get things right on the twelfth try. So the question becomes: what could this new app do to try and create a persisting healthy culture among its users? How could this new app not devolve into the same wasteland of crazy uncles that every other site has become?
I do believe it's possible to create a social media site with a long-lasting positive culture, and there are three things I think you need to do to accomplish that.
The first is straight-forward: you need to design the algorithm to encourage positive interactions. Without question the most influential factor in determining the toxicity and overall culture of a social media platform is the algorithm which dictates its content. There's a reason everyone seems pissed off on Facebook: because Facebook optimizes its feed to show you rage-filled content. It doesn't have to be this way though. For as flawed as the app is from a national security perspective, I think TikTok is one of the better examples here. All of the TikTok addicts I know are addicted because of how much they enjoy the content, not because of how much it pisses them off. We've proven that you can make a sticky social media site off of promoting things people love, not hate. And I hope to God this upcoming Twitter replacement makes a similar choice.
The second thing you do is design the UI to promote clear identity verification. I'm not saying you can't have an anonymous profile if you so chose, but the app has to be designed so the norm is to use your real name, not a nonsense handle with no picture. Everyone is the nicest version of themselves on LinkedIn because you're not hiding your identity from anyone. It just so happens that when you can trace an angry comment directly back to a person's full name and entire work and education history, people tend to be nicer.
The last thing is a bit trickier: you need to choose your Messiahs wisely. You need to make sure the four or five profiles that everyone attaches to at launch are role models for what you want the community to be. At some point every social media platform's culture becomes defined by the behavior of its most powerful voices. Instagram culture is defined by Kylie Jenner, and Twitter culture is defined by Elon Musk. You will never be able to fully control who the most powerful voices on any platform are, but you can certainly try to game it at the start by bringing in the right early ambassadors to set the culture early. And then hope that Elon never buys you out.
Let me be clear: I don't expect any of this to actually happen. What I expect to happen is that Meta will launch Threads and it will run off a similar algorithm to Instagram and everyone will think they enjoy using it but just end up clinically depressed in the end. But we've got a golden opportunity in our hands right now to get this site right, and I hope Meta or whoever takes the task seriously and heeds at least some of the ideas outlined above.
Comments