I wish we had social media that was easily, inherently intellectual. Too much effort goes into creating more opportunities for advertisement and profit in today’s social media companies.
I wish some of that effort and deep thinking went into bringing people with similar, real interests together in shared venues, for them to simply nerd out free of any ideologist talk or further agenda.
What is Current Social Media Like?
Social media has become indispensable. Without it, many of our friends would completely be out of reach, as it was the case for most of our grandparents’ childhood friends. Such a harsh disconnect is unthinkable these days, even with acquaintances you probably don’t care much for.
Social Media Used to Be All About Friendship
When Facebook made its global emergence in the early 2010s, videos of long-lost friends in their silver ages hugging each other dearly were roaming the Internet. How beautiful and humane was social media!
Social media was all about sharing and celebrating beautiful moments with loved ones. Facebook would send pairs of friends specially curated reminders of their last years of friendship whenever it was the anniversary of them becoming friends on Facebook. Friendliness was all around and friendship was holy.
In time, ads started to dominate more and more space in any social media platform’s user experience.
Coolness, Monetized
Our friends were in there, too, every passing day more than ever. Some days on our Instagram feeds, it almost felt like we were watching ads with friends. With some accounts, it has become hard to tell from all the filtering and modifications if the figures at focus are humans or not. Certain brands, poses and modus operandi frequented our feeds, like new types of poses with peculiar facial expressions, certain places that must be frequented or certain captions as an etiquette for coolness.
Next came the short video craze - like a superficial, inhumane but insanely funny communication layer with our friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaaC57tcci0&embedable=true
Social media is now all about building a brand for yourself.
No-one really cares how friendly you are. This is probably because you need to buy more if you treat yourself like a business.
Friendship, on the other hand, does not feed the companies all that much.
I really wonder about the types of conversations that must have taken place in all social media big tech over the last decade. People in decision-making probably made utterances like: “We need less friendship!”, “Let’s push for more insecurity with girls aged between 13-17…” or “How many times do I have to tell you that I want that thumb to go numb from endless scrolling and I won’t stop until we reach there with at least 20% of the population!!!”
How Would Inherently Intellectual Social Media be Different?
Inherently intellectual social media would only strive to bring out the intellectual in all humans. Every tiny bit, every interaction, would be specifically designed to help people discover what complex topic they deeply care about and to nurture that interest bit by bit.
What We Need is Perhaps a Better Version of Reddit
To me, a better social media model sounds a lot like Reddit, but with less ads and much less toxicity. Also, there needs to be more mechanisms that help with onboarding new users and connecting them with users with similar deep interests. Put another way, I want this Reddit alternative to be welcoming to more than 20% of my friends circle and something my grandma too, could like and use, on a daily basis.
Remembering the Joy of Actual Conversations
I think a technology like this could have many shapes and sizes. The best variation would be one focusing on hosting the most enriching conversations for its users. Simply for the joy of it, having people discuss things with real value.
Having said that, there needs to be gentle mechanisms in place to make sure the platform doesn’t become the next Clubhouse with its low-quality content, or like Twitter with its billionaire dictators. An easy way to get people to co-create high-quality content together would involve some sort of voluntary profiling. I’ll detail this idea in a later section.
I know I’m asking too much. But think about this: How many of us ever thought humans would develop something called a scrolling addiction? Why can’t we develop a healthy, creative and production addiction for once?
How Could We Build Such a Social Media Platform?
I would first try to pin what features, screens and designs and inherently intellectual social media would boil down to.
Here is an example: Each user could have a profile with sections visualizing their answers to special question packages that illustrate e.g. what their political ideology really is, how feminist they are, or even perhaps which one from the 16 personalities they are. I think with a profiling like this there’ll be increased possibility for deeper exchanges. Of course, there will be superficialities, misunderstandings and alike. The platform would have measures in place to correct those, like an embedded, distributed fact-checking service where the community works together to verify a claim’s sources. If the verification isn’t complete, there could be warnings as such.
Further, every user can select which question packages they want to answer. No-one would be forced to answer any question. These packages will also be created by users and the better, or more interesting ones will be naturally more popular over time.
Another big challenge in any social media platform is, as far as I’m aware, getting the first big bunch into the platform. From other big examples, it’s safe to assume that there are some field-tested tactics that work well: Like targeting university students or teenagers; or launching in one geographical hub after the other.
Further, I’d pay attention to designing an infrastructure that helps users safely steward their own data and make sure to not to make money through product or service advertisement. I think there are other ways to make money than ads and almost always, crowdsourcing is the best alternative.
Would It Make Life Better or Worse? How and Why?
A new, more benevolent social media could make life better on earth. Our further education system is outdated, universities and programs offer very limited ways for people to pursue their real interests. If new types of social media played well-intentioned mind tricks to get you to pursue your intellectual curiosities, one could have a clearer path towards fulfilling themselves. Instead of showing you another piece of useless crap to buy to get through a bad day, it could help you relax your mind. A benevolent social media could help you cultivate your attention to direct it towards better understanding something a little more complex than a few seconds-long funny videos.
I think the world would have an increased number of impressive solutions and more creative problem-solving. We’d have more inventions from an increased number of small businesses. People with real stakes at solving a common problem would unite forces, giving their best shots at creative problem-solving.
What Precautions Could We Take to Prevent It from Becoming the Next Big Evil Thing?
This consideration is relevant for anyone creating any new technology that is intended to operate on a global scale. For this specific idea of mine, it’s of utmost importance: Our recent history is full of misdeeds by other social platforms like Facebook & co and their unethical experimentations for mass manipulation and profit-making.
For argument’s sake, I’d like to argue that neither of the misbehaving boards of tech billionaires of today were originally packed with selfish intentions. Rather, let’s assume they were “forced” to enter bigger games after their services reached a certain growth threshold.
There were two aspects of their centralized, few-heads big decision-making that made their entrance into darker schemes a breeze: First and foremost, like hinted, there were too few of them and more opportunities for more selfish motives to precede. Also, because their decision-making has never really been transparent, there weren’t many diverse opinions that could critique them out of their misbehaving ways. Not to mention how this opaqueness presented bottlenecks towards timely reporting and public awareness.
To sum up, I think it’s time for us to re-think what type of social media we want to let into our lives. Social media platforms function as moderators to a global conversation. In an age where technological inventions are capable of creating more democratic, free and just communities, it is only fair to demand more transparent, less selfish moderators.