Communities are different online and off, and pluralism that thrives in the real world can turn toxic in the digital world.
How Social Media Tricks our Brains — and Destroys our Politics - Aaron Ross Powell's Blog
Pluralistic: Social media without socializing (19 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
From the earliest days of social media, social media bosses have been at war with sociability. To create a social media service is to demarcate legitimate and illegitimate forms of sociability. It's a monumental act of hubris, really.
Leaflet, Blogging, and How to Fix Social Media - Aaron Ross Powell
Decentralization, network overlap, and why we should all blog, too.
Pluralistic: Post-American compute for a post-American Internet (04 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Obviously, the non-American world has a digital sovereignty problem – Trump has means, motive and opportunity to order his tech companies to shut down any public official, large corporation, or individual who displeases him:
The Case for a Public Social Media Platform - JSTOR Daily
Artist and writer Joshua Citarella explores why corporate platforms corrode democracy—and what a postal-service-style digital commons could do differently.
Bluesky COO Rose Wang On Building a Better Social Network
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.
Blacksky
Decentralized social media built for community power, culture, and collective freedom.
Blacksky
Decentralized social media built for community power, culture, and collective freedom.
Decentralized Social Media for 40 Million+ Users (with Bluesky’s Jay Graber)
Custodians of the Internet
A revealing and gripping investigation into how social media platforms police what we post online—and the large societal impact of these decisions Most use...
Pluralistic: The Post-American Internet (01 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
On December 28th, I delivered a speech entitled "A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet" for 39C3, the 39th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, Germany. This is the transcript of that speech.
Xodus
...Building a movement away from toxic social media platforms, towards alternative open social media...
Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6nue7_v1 preprint w/ Richard Rogers
Pluralism is great in cities and can turn toxic in digital spaces like Bluesky. This isn't a problem with pluralism, but with the structure of digital spaces. Fortunately, there's a pretty simple solution to keep the benefits of vast online communities while quieting their most toxic residents.
Social Media and Anti-Social Pluralism
www.aaronrosspowell.com🐝 Social Media (SB Commentary)
things I said about social media
Bee 🐝 (@sweetbee.vip)
Bee 🐝 (@sweetbee.vip)
Bee 🐝 (@sweetbee.vip)
