The Weird, Fragmented World of Social Media After Twitter

ominouslemon@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 169 points –
The Weird, Fragmented World of Social Media After Twitter
theatlantic.com
49

  • Reddit - Shoots itself in the foot while decapitating the other because reasons

  • Twitter - Shoots itself in the foot and decapitates itself

  • Facebook/Instagram/Threads - Huge identity Crisis

  • Telegram - Sells itself out

What a world.

  • Google - Shoots itself in the foot by planning to introduce Web Intregrity to Chrome, because they're now evil.
  • Signal messenger: ditches SMS support, asks disgruntled users for donations.
3 more...

The site has always been much smaller than Facebook, and it only mattered because politicians, journalists, and those who currently pass for public intellectuals were using it. Whether you read The New York Times or watched Fox News, you would encounter content that began its life on Twitter.

This article is a big long hot take. Which is fine, it's kind of entertaining. But yeah if you care what the NYT and Fox News are printing on a daily basis you might feel a little untethered at the moment. Understanding that the two are linked is so close to understanding . . . something.

Still, lots of people care about the NYT and Fox News. And I mean LOTS of them

I hope this keeps up. Nothing would be better than corpo-owned social media dying out.

Very bad for some people like artists in the short term, specially if they haven't made an account somewhere else yet, but a centralized platform's eventual decline and death is inevitable to begin with, really. Twitter's is just happening much faster than expected.

Mastodon really needs to step up its ease-of-use though. For one, the apps should auto-assign users to instances based on their selected interests (letting them change it of course). It also has lots of minor inconveniences like the reply and like counts only showing interactions from your own instance, unlike Lemmy. Both Lemmy and Mastodon also have major discoverability issues right now.

Firefish looks great though, and I hope Bluesky's protocol makes itself compatible with ActivityPub, even if with a bridge between the two.

It's a bad time for social media right now

I'd argue the opposite. People have been fed up with the mainstream platforms for a long time now. Now that we know how social media grew grassroots terrorism and that the platforms allowed it for ad clicks, I'd say it's a good time to pivot away from the traditional models of the last 15-20 years, move away from the Facebooks and Twitters, and try something new.

Professionally, I lead a team of digital artists and oversee digital marketing efforts for a government client. The chaos and burning out of Twitter and Reddit has been a great time for my team as we've finally been given the latitude to do new work and build new strategies instead of just doing the same bullshit over and over. I've started enjoying work again and my team has been energized because everyday there's something new to overcome. And because the social media ecosystem is so turbulent, it's actually removing the pressure from us because our client understands that we are operating in new territory. Essentially, we are being allowed to fail in the pursuit of innovation.

I'm pumped to be a part of this evolving shift. There's so much potential. Also, I'm selfishly enjoying watching these fucking assholes like Musk flail and burn through billions of dollars as a result of their hubris.

Out of curiosity, what new things had your team been trying?

Dumping Twitter, to start. We've been able to finally get our client to try some new things using IG reels and YT shorts. We've also been able to grab their ear about Reddit, Lemmy, and Mastodon. While they're not fully onboard yet with federated platforms, they're interested, which is a huge step. We've also been pitching more proactive content and getting more support on strategy shifts to have a more conversational back-and-forth with the client's audience. They used to prefer to get people off open comments and into private DMs. We have been pushing them to be more transparent and human with their direct engagement.

Twitter is dead much before elon turd bought it.

Yet Trump wouldn't have been as destructive without it. Covid wouldn't have been as destructive without it. It was dead to anyone who knew what it was yet here we are, hoping the millions stuck in Apartheid Clyde's Magic Funhouse can escape.

Got paywalled on this article.