Is it just me or have we lost the ability to collectively move to competitors in social networks?
I remember the day when digg was overthrown, MySpace, livejournal... there's a long list. But in recent memory, Twitter, reddit, and more(eg twitch) are calling people's bluff and they seem to be at least partly getting away with it (at least they've maintained the market leader position).
Any ideas why?
One guess: These markets have matured into a monopoly with fragmented competition so that the only competitors that are in position to accept new users are niche products and not ready to absorb or capitalize on these collapses (eg federated products or alt right platforms).
Anyways, it's a bit of a pipe dream but I would love if we had something like a non-for-profit which could come in and create a better long-term home and single ecosystem to compete with these monopolies when they start misbehaving. I think signal did a really good job at this. I've been able to move a number of my messaging groups onto it. Pipe dream but Signal or Wikimedia foundation run social networks might be interesting.
The number of users on these platforms has increased considerably. Orchestrating a “movement” consisting of hundreds of millions of people takes a really significant forcing function that affects everyone, not just a vocal minority.
I remember the day when digg was overthrown, MySpace, livejournal... there's a long list. But in recent memory, Twitter, reddit, and more(eg twitch) are calling people's bluff and they seem to be at least partly getting away with it (at least they've maintained the market leader position).
Any ideas why?
One guess: These markets have matured into a monopoly with fragmented competition so that the only competitors that are in position to accept new users are niche products and not ready to absorb or capitalize on these collapses (eg federated products or alt right platforms).
Anyways, it's a bit of a pipe dream but I would love if we had something like a non-for-profit which could come in and create a better long-term home and single ecosystem to compete with these monopolies when they start misbehaving. I think signal did a really good job at this. I've been able to move a number of my messaging groups onto it. Pipe dream but Signal or Wikimedia foundation run social networks might be interesting.