Social media is going through a midlife crisis.
How does that work? Social media is only around 20 years old! Well, tech ages twice as fast, so it only took half the time.
“It does make me increasingly nervous that one of them really wants to move to Mars and the other one has a legit bunker. Like, what are they preparing for?”
Certainly, the owners of social media are going through midlife crises (I personally wouldn’t know anything about that): Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, two of the richest men in the world, are responsible for over 3 billion monthly active users. And maybe more if ‘Elon can save TikTok.’
What does saving TikTok even mean? And why are the people in control of what drives our attention online blaming everyone else for the problems their platforms cause?
To help me answer those questions and pose many more is award-winning podcaster and author, Amber Mac, who literally wrote the book on social media.
Now, techno-optimists, members of the e/acc movement, or those who like to order their lives as a reflection of the rich and powerful, might bristle at some points of this conversation. But it’s fair to say that the day-to-day experience on these social platforms isn’t great, and is unlikely to improve if the platform owners abdicate their responsibility of moderation (which some have argued is actually the product). Platformer’s Casey Newton has done an excellent job tracking the obvious harms that will come from ignoring mis- and disinformation or removing protections for underrepresented groups.
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Understanding what’s about to happen is important but so is understanding why it’s happening. Free speech is an important democratic pillar in need of a refresh to function in modern digital-first societies, but it’s not what is driving X and Facebook’s leadership; the hypocrisy from both (or if you want to be charitable, dire intellectual inconsistency) cuts the legs out from that argument.
That leaves the old standbys of power and politics. The tech and political worlds have completely collided and it can’t be ignored that Facebook’s policies change in lockstep to each US election outcome or that Musk has used his purchase of X to drive specific political outcomes. And again, I don’t think these are principled decisions but something much simpler: the middle-aged owners of the world’s social platforms really care about what you think of them.
On the podcast, Amber wasn’t too interested in my armchair psychoanalysis, but these are human beings, remember? The problem is the extent to which their very human personal limitations impact the rest of us. Perhaps that’s why we’re now seeing tech leaders band together to prevent the billionaire capture of Bluesky.
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The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Produced & edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image courtesy BetaKit. Source images courtesy Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.