Social media and instant messaging fundamentally changed how we talk to each other. The paragraph has ceded power to fast moving and ephemeral chat that inevitably leans toward the shallow and reactive.
Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization
The social media ecosystem appears to be in flux. Twitter’s rebranding to X has come to symbolize a broader reorganization of online publics – political reshuffling, user attrition, and uncertainty over the role of legacy platforms. Simultaneously, the shift from text-based, networked feeds toward algorithmically curated, short-form video has accelerated, with TikTok setting the pace for the wider ecosystem [18, 14, 16]. At the same time, everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps. Commentators describe a digital public sphere in transition: smaller, more fragmented, less dominated by traditional social networking sites, and rise of more broadcast-oriented forms of media – with some even suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the social media era.
Introducing a network for thoughtful conversations
The quality of conversations on the Internet is terrible. Most platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. optimize for engagement as their key metric. This spawns and rewards behavior that leads to bragging of gameable metrics such as likes and followers, self-feeding thought bubbles, knee-jerk reactions, “if you’re not on our side, you’re on their side” mentality, and thought policing even by people who think they’re fighting for a good cause. Today’s Internet doesn’t incentiviz
The fall... and rise and rise and rise of chat networks
From CompuServe to Telegram, chat has come a long way—and it's just getting started.
The Social Media Sea Change
What happens when the thing that structured so much of our lives loses its utility?
Blue Skies Ahead: Social Media's Quiet User Revolution
In a digital landscape increasingly defined by user concerns over privacy and control, a quiet revolution is taking shape.
Measuring The Health of Our Public Conversations - Cortico
By Deb Roy, Eugene Yi, Russell Stevens Published: March 1, 2018 The Internet and social media have transformed modern society in many positive ways by connecting us to the world’s information, enabling social connections that transcend space and time, and giving everyone a voice. Within this transformation, social media have become an essential part of
Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again
The triumphant return of aimless digital chatter.
The echo chamber effect on social media
Significance We explore the key differences between the main social media platforms and how they are likely to influence information spreading and the formation of echo chambers. To assess the different dynamics, we perform a comparative analysis on more than 100 million pieces of content concerning controversial topics (e.g., gun control, vaccination, abortion) from Gab, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. The analysis focuses on two main dimensions: 1) homophily in the interaction networks and 2) bias in the information diffusion toward like-minded peers. Our results show that the aggregation in homophilic clusters of users dominates online dynamics. However, a direct comparison of news consumption on Facebook and Reddit shows higher segregation on Facebook. , Social media may limit the exposure to diverse perspectives and favor the formation of groups of like-minded users framing and reinforcing a shared narrative, that is, echo chambers. However, the interaction paradigms among users and feed algorithms greatly vary across social media platforms. This paper explores the key differences between the main social media platforms and how they are likely to influence information spreading and echo chambers’ formation. We perform a comparative analysis of more than 100 million pieces of content concerning several controversial topics (e.g., gun control, vaccination, abortion) from Gab, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. We quantify echo chambers over social media by two main ingredients: 1) homophily in the interaction networks and 2) bias in the information diffusion toward like-minded peers. Our results show that the aggregation of users in homophilic clusters dominate online interactions on Facebook and Twitter. We conclude the paper by directly comparing news consumption on Facebook and Reddit, finding higher segregation on Facebook.
Brett Scott (@brettscott)
Marshall McLuhan is famous for his observation that the form of a communication technology can shape our mind and society The age of the printed book, for example, carried with it a particular way of being. Regardless of the differing content of different books, all books required a particular mindset in which a thread is followed from the beginning to the end through an arc I feel the age of social media is like the age of a ripped up book, as if we were surrounded by torn shards and shreds of paper floating like confetti around us. We grab for them, hoping for some tiny insight, but not having any way of knowing where it fits in the overarching narrative This note is one such shard. You can toss it away now
How The Enshittification Of Social Media Is Decreasing The Switching Costs And Enabling Something New
In the last few weeks I’ve written about how Elon Musk’s “changes” to how Twitter is running have done an amazing job convincing people to join Mastodon. And I’ve also…
Small talk acts like social glue – here’s how to get better at it
Maybe think of small talk as a technology: a human invention for accomplishing social goals.
Group chats rule the world
Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups. Being part of the right group chat can feel like having a peek at the kitchen of a restaurant but instead of food, messy ideas and gossip fly about in real time, get mixed, remixed, discarded, polished before they show up in a prepared fashion in public.
Social media algorithms can be redesigned to bridge divides — here’s how
"It falls to both the tech companies that built these systems and an engaged public to create technologies designed for social cohesion."
🐝 Social Media (SB Commentary)
things I said about social media
Bee 🐝 (@sweetbee.vip)
Bee 🐝 (@sweetbee.vip)
Bee 🐝 (@sweetbee.vip)