I agree that the fates of social networks can develop and evolve intrinsically over time, and that there's maybe too much effort placed on advocating for their use with an immediate horizon as the goal.
However, it's pretty clear that network effects matter in social networks and other forms of IT. In some sense this is precisely why some people feel burned at the moment, in part.
In that regard, I don't really blame people for selling a social network or manipulating uptake, even if I don't like the network itself. It's how these things proceed in part.
I also agree with the author that it's ok if a community is small. I've come to the opinion that sometimes having a smaller community can be a good thing.
On the other hand, some platforms — the web, email — are pretty dominant, and we've lacked an open social network platform that solves the problem of putting content distribution directly in the hands of content producers. Part of what Mastodon, Bluesky, and Lemmy are trying to do is be that platform.
I also think it's normal for developers to want to make as many users of their products happy. So to the extent they make lots of users happy, they're happier?
> we've lacked an open social network platform that solves the problem of putting content distribution directly in the hands of content producers
I don't know about "open", but YouTube does this pretty well IMO. Search results aren't based on your profile, and it all seems pretty un-"managed", in a Twitter Files sense. I know it does do demonetization if people complain, but while it's not perfect, it's not unreasonable.
YouTube prioritizes "authoritative sources" when searching for certain topics, which means channels of legacy media outlets.
Are we sure that your profile doesn't affect search results? I'd expect the opposite, considering it's Google and one of the things they're known for is changing search results based on your profile.
I think it does. I remember that some of my more common search results changed to include children's content after I went on a lazytown binge out of nostalgia
However, it's pretty clear that network effects matter in social networks and other forms of IT. In some sense this is precisely why some people feel burned at the moment, in part.
In that regard, I don't really blame people for selling a social network or manipulating uptake, even if I don't like the network itself. It's how these things proceed in part.
I also agree with the author that it's ok if a community is small. I've come to the opinion that sometimes having a smaller community can be a good thing.
On the other hand, some platforms — the web, email — are pretty dominant, and we've lacked an open social network platform that solves the problem of putting content distribution directly in the hands of content producers. Part of what Mastodon, Bluesky, and Lemmy are trying to do is be that platform.
I also think it's normal for developers to want to make as many users of their products happy. So to the extent they make lots of users happy, they're happier?