Social media is a bubble

 Here's how the social media industry dies:

I used to be active on three social media platforms: Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. As of now that's going down to one. And I'm not really active on it.

Social media means social power. It's a propaganda platform. But political social media doesn't work if it's like a meeting of the Supreme Soviet, circa 1956: "Yes, Comrade, I completely agree!" It works if there is diversity of outlook and debate. And then you have agents flooding that with bullshit - Russian talking points, fascist bullshit, whatever.

And there lies the rub.

As more and more authoritarians and totalitarians begin to take over social media spaces, making posts and starting subreddits, etc, so does resistance. People who believe in equality, democracy, and freedom make posts in totalitarian social media spaces to break their balls, take the piss, and generally tell them to fuck off.

Totalitarians don't like being told to fuck off. So they inevitably report such posts as troll posts. And the mods, being morons, accept this. They take the word of a Fascist or Stalinist at face value. And thus the domination of totalitarians is secured, as more and more liberal, democratic, and secular voices are kicked off the platform for talking back to the authoritarians, the platform inevitably becomes a hive of groupthink. Like the Supreme Soviet circa 1956: A boring group of boring people agreeing with each other all the time.

People don't tune in for that. They tune in for sparks. Argument. Dissent. All the messy splendour of democracy.

So social media is going to become more homogeous, more boring, and more conformist. And thus... the bubble bursts. The people taking it over are making it so toxic and yet so boring that nobody is going to want to tune in.

I give it a couple of years. Reddit, maybe three, because it's long form content and not dominated by politics yet. Twitter only exists now as a vanity project. Facebook is a glorified party planner, living off it's own corporate body fat - and even the party planning bit is falling apart, since the boss is more interested in his VR video game than the thing that made him rich in the first place.

We should just call it a day and go back to having talkboards. Now they were good.