Lots of corporations (mostly Google) have competed with Facebook for the social media colonies, and their attempts aren’t missed; but Facebook’s monopoly also beat out the divey-er venues and communal spaces which elevated their members to five minutes of fame and triple platinum albums without sponcon. Their obituaries tell us what we already know–that your feed could look a lot more interesting, more avant-garde, joyous, local, intimate, kinky, weird, and hilarious–and yes, scarier and even more hateful than it does now–thanks to varying degrees of censorship, cross-platform embeds, aesthetic customization, technopanic, and algorithm-free zones. It’s not to say that without Facebook, the whole internet would be more like a local farmer’s market or a punk venue or an art gallery or comedy club or a Narnia fanfic club, just that those places are harder to find these days.
—Whitney Kimball, in “Why These Social Networks Failed So Badly”
Published to write.house by Bix Frankonis. Comments and replies by email are welcome.