The need of protocols over platforms
Why mass-migration from twitter is not a long term solution.
Since Elon Musk took over twitter and started to announce radical changes to the platform, there is an ongoing mass migration from twitter to other platforms. The majority seems to be migrating towards Mastodon which seems to be the most attractive alternative, partially because it is not owned by a single billionaire who can make radical changes to a platform overnight.
I have also been thinking about what the change of ownership means to me personally, but rather than just jumping the board like we were on the Titanic rushing towards a giant iceberg, I've thought to myself:
What's going to happen with all my thoughts, tips, conversations, connections and other data that I've built up over more than 15 years?
This wasn't the first time I've been toying with the idea of leaving a platform that is so heavily embedded in today's inter-personal connections. I had to take a step back and use some critical thinking to figure out what this really means to me personally as well as to us as a society.
In the beginning of 2021 I have decided to leave Facebook for a variety of reasons, mainly because I had finally accepted the fact that as long as I have access to the platform, I am being used and can fall victim to it any time. I’ve tried limiting the use of the platform for a while, used to delete the Facebook app and kept Messenger only to be able to keep in touch with others and I still believe it is not a solution and the threats to my privacy and mental health is still real. I've had many conversations with people who claim to have successfully tamed the platform, groomed their newsfeed to an extent whereby they are apparently in full control of it but I'm still sceptical to this date. Let me explain why.
Facebook was built on top of a scientifically proven security hole of the human psyche and it's extremely difficult to defeat it (if even possible). The bubble effect and the algorithmic bias are still very much in effect, the platform keeps me trapped in many other ways so I've had to leave the platform entirely.
I’ve been Facebook-free for nearly two years and even though there are a few downsides to being an outsider (getting to know of certain events/gigs sometimes a little too late being the most annoying one), the benefits of clarity and digital silence in my life is priceless. There's a very rich and intentional life beyond Facebook/Instagram and the rest and desperate the biggest fear, you don't have to leave all your friendships and social connections behind to live in isolation.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, protocols over platforms.
So given the recent shitstorm over at twitter lately a lot of the people are fleeing the platform, moving their accounts to other spaces, leaving their data, connections, conversations and timelines behind. There's a few problems with this.
Your data, your conversations, following and reputation will be at least partially (if not entirely) will be left on a platform that is not interoperable with anything else. And here comes the shocking news:
The next platform won't be interoperable either.
Mastodon might be decentralised where different "instances" can work together where people can follow each other, Mastodon users won't be able to connect to people who are on different platforms. On top of that, despite the good intentions of the Mastodon developers, there's zero guarantee that this next platform will be sustainable, stable and usable as twitter (which in comparison had major funding behind it).
Even though there's no centralised authority and anyone can operate a server or hub, it's not an easy undertaking and maintaining a platform with such complexity isn't a viable alternative to a regular person. Moreover, the data you have created does not actually belong to you (but the instance operators) and there's no way you can continue building after you've taken it somewhere else. Despite how European GDPR standards mandate service operators to provide export functionality of their data.
What would you do if now you migrated over to Mastodon, put a lot of effort building up your profile and reputation again, only to find yourself in the same boat in a couple of years time, having to look for an alternative because the platform no longer serves your needs, or it just isn't sustainable...
Although there are other, lesser known but otherwise interesting or great alternatives (such as SSB), these haven't reached a critical mass to be seen as viable alternatives for the masses, yet some of the conscious and tech-savvy people are slowly but steadily building a long term alternative to social networking that aims to solve problems at a much lower level. Instead of rebuilding a platform that is "free" as in open source, they are putting a twist on social media by rethinking how real life social connections should look like in the digital space. This is a radically new way of thinking about the problem and it's turning social media upside down by taking data ownership and the notion of privacy as first class citizens.
So before you are jumping the ship over at twitter, take a step back and at least look and make an informed decision on where you are putting your efforts.
As to what this means to us, software developers, UX designers and tech-savvy researchers, it's time for us to put more focus on interoperability, data ownership and sustainable discoverability. And that won’t be a platform, it will have to be a set of well written protocols that work together in a coherent way, each and every single one of them contributing towards a north star, that is the future of sustainable social media.