Negotiating the world of alternative social media platforms. It’s one of those things where I think we need…

Negotiating the world of alternative social media platforms. It’s one of those things where I think we need to zoom out and reframe the entire question. Before we focus on technical characteristics of each platform, do we really understand why we want social media at all? /1

All technologies implement a particular view of the world. They’re not just tools. Social media is clearly sold as some form of ‘democracy’ in action. A way to ‘connect’, and for ‘the people’ to coalesce all of their daily opinions into democratic outcomes. /2

I’ve Tweeted very often here about why I think all of that is a total misunderstanding of the most basic ways humans behave. Societies do not and never have (or will) operate by aggregating what every individual thinks and feels. /3

It’s not even what happens on these platforms. What happens on these platforms is how all humans *always* behave, together. People join groups (I call them teams to capture the rivalry/competition). Those teams battle for status with other teams. Team sports. Status games. /4

A team/group forms mostly around a high-status individual or belief, that followers then emulate in various ways. Imitation is the root of all human life. Imitation creates status, and status creates identity. /5

It literally defines who we all are. The structure you see on social media, with a relative handful of hugely popular ‘influencers’, followed by vast numbers of others, is the structure of all societies themselves. /6

In the case of X now, it’s obviously been hijacked (though at great expense) by an owner who has socially dangerous ideas for it. It’s a tool to further his particular belief system. Which is forcing many to abandon ship. The platform is probably terminally enshittified. /7

But do we really want to reproduce this same model somewhere else? if societies do always have this same basic structure, driven by status and identity, why wouldn’t we just revert to the techniques that evolved over millennia, to manage that? /8

The entire history of the human race is the history of the invention of those techniques. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. Most generally, it requires a centralised status hierarchy that can be managed, from which all other team sports then derive. /9

It’s unpopular to say it, but this is the actual origin of religion and monarchies. And States. Centralised status hierarchies, invented to prevent the widespread chaotic and violent battles over status. The team sports, status games. You can’t be rid of those games. /10

But you can manage them. Which is what those institutions did. Social media has zero chance of emulating their relative success, not least because it’s owned by a handful of people with no real merit in any way at all, let alone as leaders of entire societies. /11

We need to abandon the idea that societies are built from the ‘bottom up’, by ‘the people’. A fantasy invented by people who never had to run a society. There are no tops and bottoms. Ditching this fantasy should fundamentally shift how we think about social media as well. /end