Current platforms care about two things: data for advertisers and user retention in order to serve the ads. This informs the worst parts of their design and influences user behavior, often for the worse. The gamified karma and award system of :reddit-logo:, the endless scroll of slop, the parasocial hell that is influencer culture, constant notifications, Twitter's hot take economy, etc.
Now, let's say, for the sake of argument :expert-shapiro: that you were asked to design a new social media platform, and profit/operating costs are not a concern. How would you go about doing it? Would it be somewhat similar to what we currently have, or radically different?
For example, how could a facebook-like platform that actively wants you off it and touching grass with your friends do that? Maybe encourage meetups by suggesting activities and helping with scheduling? Do away with the like/share functionality? Is the whole format doomed from the start?
I'd say this place is a good example: by removing a part of reddit design (:downbear:) better discussion was incentivized and a tool for harassment was removed.
I want to say, based on my experiences on the pre-2005 internet, that it's absolutely crucial to keep the user-to-moderator ratio no higher than 100-to-1, but I suspect that may not scale very well.
BBCode 2.0
All of the big forums are designed to be addictive. And yes this includes this website which is still just a knockoff of Reddit. BBCode-style forums allow people to post content without turning that content into an addictive drip feed. I'm not saying you have to use exactly that format, but that's the secret to a "good" social media site - abandoning intentionally addictive design cues.
If someone could figure out how to stop me being bombarded with reactionary bullshit from my friends and family 24/7 I’d probably still have a facebook account.
It’s odd, I deleted facebook and now I just follow random people I’ll never meet on twitter and talk to y’all.
Comments under other people posts are bad (or they promote very unhealthy behaviors), so you can only dm people and (maybe) like them. You want to talk shit, you join thematic forums of talking shit, which don’t have likes
