New York Times
Social media is broken. It has poisoned the way we communicate with each other and undermined the democratic process. Many of us just want to get away from it, but we can’t imagine a world without it.
Though we talk about reforming and regulating it, “fixing” it, those of us who grew up on the internet know there’s no such thing as a social network that lasts forever. Facebook and Twitter are slowly imploding. And before they’re finally dead, we need to think about what the future will be like after social media so we can prepare for what comes next.
I don’t mean brainstorming new apps that could replace outdated ones, the way Facebook did Myspace. I mean what will replace social media the way the internet replaced television, transforming our entire culture?
To find out what comes next, I went on a quest. I was looking for a deeper future than the latest gadget cycle, so I spoke to experts in media history, tech designers, science fiction writers and activists for social justice. I even talked to an entity that is not a person at all.
Collectively, they gave me a glimpse of a future where the greatest tragedy is not the loss of our privacy. It is the loss of an open public sphere. There are many paths beyond the social media hellscape, and all of them begin with reimagining what it means to build public spaces where people seek common ground.
I began on a steep, narrow street in San Francisco’s North Beach, a neighborhood overlooking the Bay where beatniks used to hang out in the 1950s. It’s miles away from techie-clogged SoMa, where Google employees eat their free lunches and the glowing Twitter sign looms over Market Street.
This is the home of Erika Hall’s design firm Mule. She co-founded it 20 years ago, and she’s watched the web move from the margins to the center of the business world. Back in the early aughts, companies were just trying to figure out how to have an “online presence.” She and her team built websites and digital campaigns for them, using the principles of “user-centered” design to help people navigate the confusing new world of the internet.
“I absolutely believe that you can design interfaces that create more safe spaces to interact, in the same way we know how to design streets that are safer,” she said.
But today, she told me, the issue isn’t technical. It has to do with the way business is being done in Silicon Valley. The problem, as most people know by now, is that tech companies want to grab a ton of private data from their customers without telling anyone why they need it. And this, Ms. Hall says, is bad design for users. It leaves them vulnerable to abuses like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, or to hacks where their data is exposed.
What’s more, companies like Facebook and Twitter lack an incentive to promote better relationships and a better understanding of the news “because they make money through outrage and deception,” Ms. Hall said. Outrage and deception capture our attention, and attention sells ads. “At a business model level, they are ad networks parasitic on human connection.”
There is a lot of pressure on tech companies from the government as well as from activist employees to change what they do with user data. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to see an improvement. We might even see Facebook getting more comfortable with authoritarianism.
“They’ve already shown a willingness to do this — they’ve bent to the demands of other governments,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor at the University of Virginia and author of a recent book, “Antisocial Media.”
He predicts that we’re about to see a showdown between two powerhouse social media companies — Facebook and WeChat. WeChat has more than one billion users in China and among Chinese diaspora groups, and their users have no expectation of privacy. Facebook has 2.4 billion users, dominating every part of the world except China. If Facebook wants to reach inside China’s borders, it might take on WeChat’s values in the name of competition.
As scary as that sounds, none of it is inevitable. We don’t have to lose our digital public spaces to state manipulation.
I don’t mean brainstorming new apps that could replace outdated ones, the way Facebook did Myspace. I mean what will replace social media the way the internet replaced television, transforming our entire culture?
To find out what comes next, I went on a quest. I was looking for a deeper future than the latest gadget cycle, so I spoke to experts in media history, tech designers, science fiction writers and activists for social justice. I even talked to an entity that is not a person at all.
Collectively, they gave me a glimpse of a future where the greatest tragedy is not the loss of our privacy. It is the loss of an open public sphere. There are many paths beyond the social media hellscape, and all of them begin with reimagining what it means to build public spaces where people seek common ground.
I began on a steep, narrow street in San Francisco’s North Beach, a neighborhood overlooking the Bay where beatniks used to hang out in the 1950s. It’s miles away from techie-clogged SoMa, where Google employees eat their free lunches and the glowing Twitter sign looms over Market Street.
This is the home of Erika Hall’s design firm Mule. She co-founded it 20 years ago, and she’s watched the web move from the margins to the center of the business world. Back in the early aughts, companies were just trying to figure out how to have an “online presence.” She and her team built websites and digital campaigns for them, using the principles of “user-centered” design to help people navigate the confusing new world of the internet.
“I absolutely believe that you can design interfaces that create more safe spaces to interact, in the same way we know how to design streets that are safer,” she said.
But today, she told me, the issue isn’t technical. It has to do with the way business is being done in Silicon Valley. The problem, as most people know by now, is that tech companies want to grab a ton of private data from their customers without telling anyone why they need it. And this, Ms. Hall says, is bad design for users. It leaves them vulnerable to abuses like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, or to hacks where their data is exposed.
What’s more, companies like Facebook and Twitter lack an incentive to promote better relationships and a better understanding of the news “because they make money through outrage and deception,” Ms. Hall said. Outrage and deception capture our attention, and attention sells ads. “At a business model level, they are ad networks parasitic on human connection.”
There is a lot of pressure on tech companies from the government as well as from activist employees to change what they do with user data. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to see an improvement. We might even see Facebook getting more comfortable with authoritarianism.
“They’ve already shown a willingness to do this — they’ve bent to the demands of other governments,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor at the University of Virginia and author of a recent book, “Antisocial Media.”
He predicts that we’re about to see a showdown between two powerhouse social media companies — Facebook and WeChat. WeChat has more than one billion users in China and among Chinese diaspora groups, and their users have no expectation of privacy. Facebook has 2.4 billion users, dominating every part of the world except China. If Facebook wants to reach inside China’s borders, it might take on WeChat’s values in the name of competition.
As scary as that sounds, none of it is inevitable. We don’t have to lose our digital public spaces to state manipulation.
To read rest of story, click on link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/30/opinion/social-media-future.html
3 comments:
Facebook and Twitter are NOT imploding. I stopped reading this rubbish as soon as the author made such a ridiculous statement. There aren't any indications showing these social media giants are going anywhere anytime soon.
It all went bad when Bobby WC started blogging. Completely useless and amateur blog from Da Blimp. Maquiladora Reporter, that Guey!
I see three rats on that drawing
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