Everyone is aware of the broken state of online discourse — people operating in echo chambers, misinformation proliferating the social media space, endless arguments over basic facts, polarization reaching record highs, people hating others who disagree with them, cancel culture and many other issues that have been amplified due to the existing social media platforms.
Despite the general recognition of social media’s immense problems, few people have tried to solve them. Unsurprisingly, going against Facebook or Twitter is no small task and the chances of failure are – let’s be honest – close to 100 percent. But if we let fear dominate us, how are we supposed to get out of this mess?
Many of my friends who are talented engineers and designers, public intellectuals and businessmen, have tried implementing solutions within the existing platforms, namely Facebook. They started enthusiastically only to be shut down a few months later for reasons as ambiguous as “we are refocusing our resources to more mission-critical projects.” It seems obvious that Facebook’s mission-critical projects were aimed at maximizing profits over public good. Its business model uses our attention and data to extract value, which is reflected in the flawed design of its products and services.
