Social media is in a death spiral – so what comes next?

In 2021, Ethiopia actually began building its own social media site as a response to Facebook’s alleged incitement of ethnic massacres. And more recently, Japan funnelled taxpayer money into the dating app Tapple, in a bid to fix the nation’s declining marriage and birth rates.

A focus on personal wellness created an unintended side effect: a retreat from the public arena, and a shift in the distribution of power ever since.”

As Bogost himself puts it in a 2024 update on the state of social media: the rise of Bluesky “is a relapse, not a fix”.