It has sometimes felt, in recent weeks, like our social networks are secretly trying to destroy themselves. Twitter had to force Elon Musk to buy it, despite him not wanting to, and in the face of criticism from within the company that suggested he would ruin the platform. Instagram, fresh from changing its algorithm to try and copy TikTok and then accidentally sparking one of the most significant global movements of recent times, accidentally and falsely told vast numbers of its users that they had been suspended. Meta, the renamed Facebook, is seeing its share price slide as investors grow increasingly concerned that its huge investment in the metaverse is not going anywhere.
But the discussion of the future of social networking often tends to overlook those social networks that aren't so toxic and troubled, presumably because they're boring. Reddit, for instance, has gone from an often controversial and criticised platform to becoming a truly useful store of knowledge, so much so that people often add "Reddit" to Google searches in an attempt to actually get useful information. Similarly, YouTube was once rightly criticised for being a portal to various extremist beliefs; today it's one of the few places that rewards really good content. Strava, the exercise-focused social network, generally encourages people to race each other rather than hate each other, and it regularly touts information that shows it actually tends to get people off their phones.
Part of what's notable about these platforms is that they tend to get out of the way: they're just ways of connecting people to each other and sharing information. On more controversial platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, however, it increasingly feels like a game where users are playing against the algorithm to create the best tweet or post – though it's not clear what exactly happens when you win it.
It's Elon Musk's obsession with this game that seemed to bring him to buy Twitter in the first place. His posts have often seemed focused on hitting all the right points, talking about whatever was happening on Twitter itself and trying to encourage engagement. When he felt like the game wasn't going right, for him and others, he stepped in and tried to become its referee, promising to stop bias, bots and a number of other unconfirmed problems.
A lot of people have got very into these kinds of rules in recent years. On both sides of the political divide, an awful lot of time is spent, often honourably, arguing about who should speak and how on social media. Elon Musk is just the latest and most high profile person to spend a lot of money on trying to influence those rules. But it is important to remember that this kind of meta-discussion is only interesting to a limited number of people. Largely, social media is at its best when that kind of rule-making fades into the background.
Social media is people, or it should be. As many of our social networks get lost in the kind of thoroughly unsocial projects that might one day bring them down – the metaverse, taking over Twitter, aping their competitors in the name of growth, and so on – it is important to remember that.
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Keep a civil tongue.