Internet links small groups, helping dissolve big groups; good, bad? But a bit sad.
The Great Social Media Diaspora
What happens when sprawling online communities fracture into politically homogenous, self-governing communities?
The year we wanted the internet to be smaller
Why tiny, weird online communities made a comeback in 2017
Community OS stack — Open Indie
The Great Untangling: Part 1 – Shaping the foundations. To sufficiently express my identity as a netizen I require: global group messag...
The Internet is Full of Strangers | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy - Clay Shirky
Persistent patterns in long-lived online groups.
FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web un-workshop, 2026/03/02
RIP social media. What comes next is messy.
As social media splinters, how can we keep the new online spaces from devolving into toxic pits of despair?
The Next Great (Digital) Extinction
How today's internet is rapidly and indifferently killing off many systems while allowing new types of organizations to emerge.
(please don't) add me to the group
We talk a lot about how broken the internet is for all of us as individuals. Doomscrolling, algorithmic feeds, overall exhaustion at The Horrors. But this...
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.
About - Open Collective
Open Collective was founded by idealists to make online communities more sustainable. What began as a tool for open source and grassroots groups has grown into a global infrastructure for transparency, collaboration, and shared financial stewardship.
Discord: Imagine a Place
A Not Boring x The Generalist Collab on the Internet's New Home
Please Let the Internet Die
Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over.
Semble: Collective knowledge foraging in trail-based social networks beyond feeds (Lightning Talk)
FringeWare and the Dream of a Collective Mind
As the Internet began moving into the mainstream, many early adopters—including me—were idealists.
Discord Alternatives | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology