Andrew Melder

While the digital town square never truly existed, the centralised social web is making way for connecting specialised communities instead

For a while there, Twitter did feel like a town square.

This wasn’t because most people were on it. Indeed from a numbers perspective, many other networks competed or even dwarfed the number of active Twitter users at any given time. Twitter was important because it was given validity via traditional media networks, which gave it a level of importance around overall public opinion that it probably didn’t deserve.

Trending topics were given mainstream coverage, even when it wasn’t clear just how many users were actually posting about said topics at any given time. They became an easy way for those with an agenda (positive or negative) to push their narrative to an audience wider than those who simply saw it on Twitter; as long as they could get it on the trending list.

This accelerated an already growing trend of posting extreme viewpoints for attention; because social networks were always tuned for maximum attention and not reasonable discussion. That trend then migrated into a media industry hit by revenues moving away from their industry & desperate for new income streams to hold up a crumbling business model.

While all this was happening without Twitter anyway, its real time nature became a central point for an industry looking for answers to a disruption they didn’t plan for.

For a lot of us, when you heard that something was going on and you wanted the latest information about it; you no longer turned on the news, you jumped on Twitter. This is what gave the service its perception of a global town square.

However, even before the events of the past few years; things were changing.

The use of Twitter by Donald Trump to help give him the exposure (amplified through traditional news networks) to enough people disenchanted with the status quo of politics to hand him the Presidency, followed by the mental overload of the pandemic in 2020; left many mentally exhausted, disenchanted at the societal effects of this globally connected world, and reviewing their use of social media & need to be constantly aware of everything going on in this world.

Combined with an increasing concern over the power a few Tech companies had over the global discussion and increased threats of regulation as a result; a move away from centralisation was already underway.

The Musk effect

In the same way that Twitter accelerated the move towards the centralised social web; Musk’s purchase of Twitter & actions since have accelerated the move away from it.

While some are still hoping the replicate its reach and influence such as Meta’s Threads service; other services which have been active for many years as an alternative to the centralised giants have seen massive growth; most notably Mastodon.

I’m not going to get into Mastodon, the Fediverse or the ActivityPub protocol here. Just know that Mastodon is a collection of thousands of small, generally community run, servers where it’s possible to communicate with each other regardless of server; however you generally interact the most within your server community.

With each community able to manage their own needs, there’s no centralised set of rules or social norms; but each is catered for their own audience.

While Mastodon is one example of a Twitter-like yet decentralised social web; the reality is beyond the technical implementations of each, people are now moving towards services where they prefer to interact like minded individuals with similar interests instead of joining a single service looking for the “global” view.

Reddit maybe the front page of the internet for some, but a lot of its value is in the variety of communities based on specific interests or locations. Discord has also grown in popularity over the years; initially as a gaming communications platform but then expanding to cater for interests of all types.

While Reddit and Discord might appear similar to the single centralised social model; their primary usage is more aligned to connecting like-minded people in smaller communities instead of connecting everyone to what is perceived to be the global community.

The future

While I don’t know if there will be another Twitter-like service that will have the same unifying influence; I believe that there won’t be one anytime soon.

What we are seeing is a correction of the oversharing, global attention-seeking social usage that the world undertook as we got our first taste of true global connectivity through the prevalence of mobile technology and effectively unlimited connectivity.

I think there is always a desire to connect with the world; but I think the focus of our online social efforts is moving towards quality over quantity. To connect locally; whether that’s based on location, or through common interests.