I often like to listen / read when someone tells about his or her experience on different social media platforms. And when it comes to Mastodon, I’ve noticed a recurring theme: Many users describe how other social networks fill their timelines with entertaining or funny content and that they were missing this in the beginning of their “Mastodon-experience”.
And at some point I thought by myself: “Wait wait wait – Are we still talking about social networks?” Is it the purpose of a social network to keep me entertained? I mean – this isn’t the expectation from my real-world-social-network, is it?
Should we maybe differentiate between social and entertainment platforms? Should a platform still considered “social” if its primary focus is keeping users entertained with an endless stream of content?
This is just my point of view and you don’t necessarily need to agree with my understanding of “social” but hearing this repeatedly kept circling in my mind because it felt … wrong?
Traditional social networks, by definition, are (or were) supposed to facilitate interaction among users. But what I perceive is that these interactions have become secondary to the goal of maximizing screen time and keeping users engaged with a constant flow of content. And to some extent I can understand: it’s about screentime and the ability to show ads to the users. It’s about money.
Maximizing screentime is achieved by “curating” or optimizing the timeline to show me interesting stuff. On facebook and instagram, it both lead to a timeline where a couple of users that I followed just didn’t show up any more. Uhm well – not so cool. There was a reason I followed them!
But is the curation necessarily always a bad thing? I mean, doesn’t their success prove them right? A lot of people seem to use (and like) those platforms. And I do so as well. I even learned and improved my photography A LOT by using those platforms and examining the works of really good photographers. But as I said: often it is just consuming without interaction.
To me, being “social” involves true interaction between users. It means engaging in conversations, sharing experiences, and building connections. I won’t deny that this happens on those platforms as well. I even got to know a couple of nice people there that I wouldn’t want to miss and I keep in touch with friends and relatives.
But the overall feeling on the platforms with curated timelines and influencers. The decline of interaction and feedback. The hard push to video content, all that doesn’t feel overly social any more.
But where does that lead us? Should we abandon those platforms? Use them less? Well … I wouldn’t go that far. If you’re happy there – fine, great! I think it is just important to recognize and reflect on the differences and after all, the label we assign to these platforms. To me at least, this shapes my expectations and perception.
Companies may prefer the label of “social network” because it sounds more relatable and appealing than “entertainment media”. Yet, I want to encourage to question how we use social media platforms. Maybe you use it for true social connections, great! But I hear from a lot of users where this is not the case – maybe because they have lost their “social” label for those people.
If you want to try a network that’s not maximizing screentime, give Mastodon a try. The “developers” of the network don’t max screentime. They don’t earn money with ads. They just develop the software and run one of many servers. The business model simply doesn’t require the user to be locked in …
Update 08/08/2024:
Well “We’re making an update within insights to make “Views” the primary metric for Reels, Stories, photos and carousels.” – It pretty much underlines what I wrote above. “Views” are a totally valid metric for entertainment.