Possible Future of Social Media
Possible Future of Social Media
F.Y.I: This is a thought experiment, Not a prediction, that I am trying out and I would like feedback. I got the idea from a forecasting book where you choose something true today and flip it so it isn't true 10 years from now plus giving the reason why (the book's name was imaginable). I am trying to do that and include a more detailed timeline of events.
Statement: Most Social Media platforms are funded through advertisements.
Flipped Statement: In ten years most social media platforms aren't funded through advertisements.
2024
-
Economic pressures cause more social media companies to push for a greater return on investment which in turn causes them to push for more ads, higher premiums, and more actively blocking loopholes.
-
The fediverse continues to grow in numbers and more organizations start using the platform as their main base of operations because it gives them more control over how they want to present themselves and a more fine-grained look into user data which they in turn use to optimize their content.
-
The US presidential election causes a lot of turmoil on social media platforms as there becomes a more active effort to push people's opinions in one way or another causing some burnout and pushing people to either move to alternative platforms where there is less active interference or a general downturn in social media use in general.
2025-2026
-
An increase in data breaches worldwide causes a renewed effort to make self-hosting data servers cheaper and more accessible for customers which leads to some development in personal hosting of data.
-
Social media platforms that mainly run through creator-based content begin to start changing terms of service to extract more revenue from the creators, such as changes to how much of a cut the platform gets when a creator is being sponsored among other things. This leads to a backlash among creators who in response put in more effort to move into paid subscription services like Nebula.
-
Some drama happens between For-profit companies joining the fediverse and some servers colluding with such companies which in turn causes some major user pushback and a shift in the user distribution among the servers. This also causes servers to more explicitly enshrine an attitude against for-profit companies in their code of ethics. Servers are still run on donations but donating is more encouraged than before.
2027-2028
-
There is an ongoing resurgence of indie creators who start gaining traction and decide to start moving to alternative platforms such as Nebula to gain a more direct stream of revenue. This in turn draws some attention away from mainstream social media platforms. These alternative platforms also allow creators to start setting some of their videos to be free to watch so that the platform itself gets more traction and viewers.
-
Software and hardware developers are creating better networking solutions so the burden of traffic becomes less of a problem over time allowing for hosting services to handle higher traffic more cheaply.
-
Companies who are trying to streamline their business to gain more profits start trying to find where they can make budget cuts. After seeing smaller businesses succeed with more direct social media advertising and AI technology has advanced a bit decided to try and automate the promotion of products at the right time and right place using fake user accounts. As a consequence, they significantly reduce their spending on direct advertising on social media sites.
-
After more election shenanigans happen but this time more supercharged than before there is a push for more walled-off communities where it is easier to have relations with users and identify bad actors. This second surge affects the admins of the fediverse, who after dealing with some interference before decide to take a more cautious approach in accepting new users and setting up ways of monitoring the effects of the choices they make (the admins' choices not users') PS: This is assuming US elections still take place at this time but even if it doesn't I believe these techniques might still become more common anyways.
2029-2030
-
The user experience of the fediverse has improved a lot as there are more features for users, it is easier to moderate, and hosting servers are much cheaper. The fediverse would now be considered semi-mainstream.
-
Due to shifts in marketing spending, mainstream social media companies decide to pivot their funding strategy and instead tap into their massive pre-existing databases, advanced algorithms, and knowledge of social phenomenons to produce more directly profitable products for other companies like creating their automated promotion bots, advising on distribution techniques based on detailed user data, etc.
-
Some creator-driven platforms have started to implement a format where they make all of their videos free to watch and it is now a platform where you subscribe with how much you want to subscribe and the profit is distributed based on what the viewers watch.
This isn't necessarily the timeframe that I think things will happen just the most convenient numbers I could think of.
Also, does anyone know of any communities where they make narrative predictions of the future similar to this? I've heard of prediction markets where there are numeric forecasts and reasons why you make certain predictions but they usually don't flesh out their reasoning steps that happen from point A to point B which doesn't help give a more fleshed-out understanding of the world.
reality fanfic. weird.
why? is this just your thing?
reality fanfic. weird.
I mean, a lot of academic/science stuff is arguably reality fanfic.
One basic justification for this … not that one is required I’d say (and I like your encouragement below to start a community for this) … is that practicing thinking through how the world works, even if your predictive accuracy is way off … is a pretty good way exercise the “muscle” of understanding how the world works. Especially if done in collaboration with others and their feedback and counterpoints.
Idk. This is my first time doing it so maybe?
everyones got a thing, go crazy!
if you cant find a community for your thing, i believe you then need to make it!
i like sticking spock on things over at @risa@startrek.website
If journalism is the first draft of history, maybe fiction is the first draft of the future
Sci fi but make it less interesting
I think that's a fun concept. I love dealing with the mechanism of realistic hypotheticals.
If I were to answer, I think it's straight impossible for all of social media to not be funded through advertisements. There must be, to some degree, some site that clings on. But we can modify the prompt to say "the majority of social media will not be funded by advertisements." In this case, I feel like there are a couple potential mechanisms, of varying likeliness:
- people collectively become more aware of their browsing habits and start using non-advertised sites (highly unlikely)
- the government steps in and collectivizes major social media sites (highly unlikely)
- the Fediverse, or some other alternative, becomes so popular that it becomes the primary social media site (not likely, but not impossible)
- social media sites shift their business structure so that users have to pay for social media usage, but in return they get no ads (actually possible with a not-insignificant chance of this actually occurring)
- social media sites find some other way of exploiting users that is currently considered either implausible (not likely, but I wouldn't put this one out of the realm of possibility)
Thanks for engaging with the premise.
social media sites shift their business structure so that users have to pay for social media usage, but in return they get no ads
I don't think this is that likely just since they would probably lose their young audience pretty quickly especially since that audience would have to rely on their parents paying for the service which I find unlikely.
Just coming back to this after sometime and I am eating my words on them not making a dumb decision making their users pay for social media accounts.
X said that they would make new users pay 1$ per month.
It's like boiling a crab - people don't realize how much they're getting shafted if you enshittify slowly enough. And frankly, I fully predict that it'll continue to get worse. Social media execs have proven themselves to be brazen enough (and dumb enough) to so openly exploit their userbase
You should put this into a time capsule and see if you were right
There is a fair bit of research on what makes people good at predicting, see the good judgement project, in particular there is this article:
Participants were above average in intelligence and political knowledge relative to the general population. Individual differences in performance emerged, and forecasting skills were surprisingly consistent over time. Key predictors were (a) dispositional variables of cognitive ability, political knowledge, and open-mindedness; (b) situational variables of training in probabilistic reasoning and participation in collaborative teams that shared information and discussed rationales (Mellers, Ungar, et al., 2014); and (c) behavioral variables of deliberation time and frequency of belief updating. We developed a profile of the best forecasters; they were better at inductive reasoning, pattern detection, cognitive flexibility, and open-mindedness. They had greater understanding of geopolitics, training in probabilistic reasoning, and opportunities to succeed in cognitively enriched team environments. Last but not least, they viewed forecasting as a skill that required deliberate practice, sustained effort, and constant monitoring of current affairs.
TL;DR: speculating is fun but you should also look at the facts
I don't think proprietary social media is going to collapse , mark zuckerberg got a perfact SAT score, Thinking he won't notice his platform will degrade in quality is IMO wishful thinking.
I highly recommend Stephen Tetlock's book, super forecasting, who is the sponsor of the project you mention.
One method of forecasting that he identified as effective was using a spreadsheet to record events that might occur over the next 6-18 months along with an initial probability based on good judgement and the factors you quoted. Then, every day look for new information that adjusts the forecast up or down by some, usually small percent. Repeat, and the goal is you will trend towards a reasonable %. I omitted many details but that was the jist.
Now, that's for forecasting on a short ish timeframe. There is a place for more open ended reasoning and imagination, but you have to be careful not to fall prey to your own biases.
This particular forecast of OPs feels like it is ignoring several long running trends in technology adoption and user behavior without giving events that would address them, and forecasts something they care about doing better in the long-term, a source of bias to watch. I tend to agree with you that I think elements of this forecast are flawed.
I honestly don't think that any big company nowadays can collapse (look at how Digg is still a thing) but I do think that they can shift their strategy on how they monetize their users or more generally present content on their platform (like YouTube with shorts). That's partially why I didn't say the fediverse was mainstream and also why I didn't say that those media companies would collapse but instead made a point about where they might try and get their money from instead if advertising dwindled.
Also, I said this wasn't a prediction and made the timeline with a foregone conclusion.