Marc Andreessen as Avatar for Societal Decay

How to Fix Facebook—Before It Fixes Us

An early investor explains why the social media platform’s business model is such a threat—and what to do about it.

Pluralistic: Enshittification isn’t caused by venture capital (20 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Many of us have left the big social media platforms; far more of us wish we could leave them; and even those of us who've escaped from Facebook/Insta and Twitter still spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the people we care about off of them, too.

Marc Andreessen, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Marc Andreessen is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to

Are You Under the Influence? The Tail That Wags The Dog - Dhole Moments

It is tempting and forgivable to believe that we’re in control of our social media experiences. After all, we write what we want in our bio, select our avatars, and even come up with our own …

Why Influencers Suddenly Love Facebook. (No Joke.) “It’s My Biggest Source of Income”

A quiet overhaul of the 21-year-old platform’s monetization formula is winning over a new class of content makers.

Free Our Feeds

Social media is broken: controlled by a handful of billionaires who shape what people see, say, and believe. These platforms profit from division, exploit user data, and lock people into closed systems.

Digital Avatars | The Paper Pilot

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology

The Internet and the Third Estate

Mark Zuckerberg suggested that social media is a “Fifth Estate”; in fact, social media is a means by which the Third Estate — commoners — can seize political power. Here history matters…

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.

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.

Ian Preston (@ianopolous.bsky.social)

Mathematician/particle physicist turned privacy researcher. Java Rockstar #Oxford Building a better web - private, self-sovereign identity, p2p, social - with @peergos.org. Public social media undermines democracy. #covidisairborne #maskswork #cleantheair

The Truth About Social Media as an "Advertising Industry," Bluesky's Gamble, and "Reclaiming Conversation" - Nightflight

Reclaiming Social Spaces: Are Open Source Platforms a Path for More Human Connection?

What if social media platforms were built to serve their communities, not billionaires? Join us with the founders of Blacksky as we explore the potential of open source social media.