The Hard Problem of Social Media: Run Rabbit Run
Well hello again, December.
This is the one year anniversary of the most popular thing I’ve ever written on the Substack platform and it was about how that platform is going to be in trouble if it didn’t figure out what it wanted to be:
Now we’re back, sleighbells are ringing, and it’s time to play my favourite Christmas game, which I call Let’s Find Out What S Peter Davis Was Right About This Year.
I have no reason to believe any of the staff at Substack read my piece last December, nor have they ever shown particular interest in taking advice from the community. And that’s fine, who the hell am I? Not someone with any particular expertise, nor a huge following. I’m no Alex Dobrenko, that’s for sure.
Nonetheless, 2024 has been a very big year for social media, but one thing that has not changed is that Substack still can’t figure out what it wants to be. It’s a social media platform that doesn’t know anything about social media platforms and they don’t care to learn because they deny being a social media platform even though its primary selling point is its network effect.
Thing is, simply saying that you’re not a social network doesn’t magically absolve you of the need to do any of the work involved with that, and just dropping in every once in a while to sarcastically bitch about people asking you very valid questions doesn’t count.
My main thesis was this: One, a key goal for social media companies, their Holy Grail of sorts, is to figure out how to emulsify a wide range of social and political beliefs, some aggressively opposed to each other, into the same community without it breaking apart. Nobody has figured out how to do this very well yet.
Two, you cannot force people to use a social media platform, and certain types of content (such as pornography or bigotry) tend to take over a platform if it is unrestricted because it pushes out people who don’t want to be around it. I call this liquid content because it fills the shape of its container.
Platforms usually attempt the laziest possible strategy of fostering an emulsified community by simply citing “free speech” and largely just letting anyone say what they want within the law, but because you can’t force people to participate, this degrades into a monoculture over time. Platforms that don’t moderate pornography eventually become porn websites, platforms that don’t moderate white supremacy eventually become white supremacy websites, etc.
Twitter—that is, back when that’s what it was called—did a decent but imperfect job of maintaining a community in which the very broad center was able to exist in uneasy ceasefire.
Pre-2022 Twitter was maybe the closest thing to the so-called “town square” concept that anyone had achieved to date. It was a very center-liberal website. They had that Overton window wedged open as far as anyone has ever managed.
The problem for Elon Musk was that it nonetheless didn’t allow straight up white supremacists, so it still wasn’t providing the full breadth of speech that he was interested in seeing. So he fired the content moderators, shuttered the trust and safety department, and removed the “no Nazis” rule. You know, just to let them have a seat at the table like everyone else. Fair’s fair.
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