All about social networks

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.

The vast interconnection enabled by digital platforms has ended up creating more of a sense of sameness than diversity. Users are subtly guided toward the same subsets of topics, urged on by recommendations that are designed not to serve their interests but to create profitable attention fodder to sell to advertisers. Instagram doesn’t care that... See more