All about social networks

Social networks aren’t just the interface, or the algorithm, they’re also about the people in them. When I wrote “The Network’s the Thing” I meant it; the graph is inextricable from the identity of a social media service. Change the inputs of such a system and you change the system itself.

Unfollowing toxic social media influencers makes people less hostile! In 2 large field experiments, unfollowing a few extreme influencers: -Reduced partisan animosity by 24% -Increased satisfaction with Twitter/X -Led people to share higher-quality... See more

Focusing on the needs of real people isn't something that you can push up to UI design and ignore at the protocolar level. Decentralisation isn't a property of your software or protocol, it's a measure of how much the people who use and are affected by a system can have agency over it — and that agency has to be reflected at lower layers too.

You cannot fix social media by having a non-profit run it or by guiding it with some ethical principles (which at any rate means absolutely nothing without accountability to people). There is simply no universal ranking of content acceptability — there are in fact likely as many different rankings as there are people — and even if there were there... See more