The Great Social Media Disapora | NOEMA

3 Likes

For the past two decades, most online discourse has occurred on a handful of social media platforms. Their dominion seemed unshakeable.

I feel an immediate disconnect from people who talk like this.

It was once novel features, like Facebook’s photo tagging or Twitter’s quote tweets, that drew users to social media sites.

???

In the latest wave of decampment — primarily to Bluesky — users are seeking out an ideological alternative to the increasingly right-wing X.

Then they’ve got the wrong idea.

What happens when sprawling online communities of tens of millions fracture into smaller, politically homogenous self-governing communities? And what does this mean for social cohesion and consensus, both online and off?

I get really impatient with this kind of framing. I’m as big into consensus-building and reconciliation as anyone, but I can’t imagine this kind of talk being compelling to the kind of person they’re worried about.

This approach doesn’t just redefine moderation; it restructures online governance itself. And that is because, writ large, there are no refs to work.

Very incorrect. The difference is that the refs each have smaller jurisdiction.

On Bluesky — which is, for the moment, still largely just one instance run by the development team

Quickly glossing over what’s a major detail for this kind of argument.

While centralized governance on platforms like Twitter and Facebook became a highly politicized front in the culture war, it’s worth asking whether the system was truly broken. Centralized moderation, despite being imperfect, expensive and opaque, nonetheless offered articulated rules, sophisticated technology and professional enforcement teams. Criticism of these systems frequently stemmed from their lack of transparency or occasional high-profile errors, which fueled perceptions of bias and dissatisfaction.

If the main idea here is a defense of “centralized” moderation, there’s no need to predicate that argument on a defense of Twitter and Facebook.

2 Likes

If you decide to write a proper rebuttal I’m gonna post both links on my site and get the conversation going. Seems to me it’s an interesting topic.

haha well I appreciate the interest. I wouldn’t even know where to start for that – to me the piece is really all over the place. It’s framed as if it’s a critique of what federation/decentralization means for online moderation, in which case ActivityPub would be the most relevant example, but it’s also trying to shoehorn Bluesky in there as the more topical example, and at the same time it’s also doing this handwringing thing asking about “what does this mean for social cohesion and consensus?” and then… doesn’t actually propose an answer to that question, or even discuss it really. So there’s barely even an argument there to rebut.