Go back to what, the AIM and Myspace domination? Before Facebook it was Myspace that was the juggernaut of the social media sphere.
As the number of people that can freely access the internet grows, you see them focusing around a single social media platform. That's because social media strongly benefits from centralization, it's easier to talk to family and friends if you don't have to manage fifty different accounts.
The idea that there was a 'multitude of cultures' before Facebook is just wrong. There was the main social media platforms and a bunch of niche offshoots. That's why this is such a tricky problem to fix because even if Facebook vanished tomorrow, eventually there would be another platform which absolutely everyone would circle around.
Not AIM and MySpace, but things like XMPP, where you could use one chat client and connect to your own Jabber server, Twitter, and Google chat.
One solution is open, decentralized protocols.
The article addresses that a little bit here:
> ...the internet platforms were able to pursue business strategies that would not have been allowed in prior decades. No one stopped them from using free products to centralize the internet and then replace its core functions.
It's a solution to a separate problem. You need to make something easy to use for the masses, you need to make it safe from bad actors and you need to actually advertise it.
It's easy to talk about open and decentralized protocols but social media is a popularity contest, not one based off the best or most free platform. As the article mentions nothing was and nothing is stopping them from capitalizing on open and free products, followed by gutting and replacing them.
Federated social networking solves this and didn't exist then. It allows separate networks to interoperate so you can still capture the overall utility of network effects. I think it would need governments to push this though e.g. recognise this as they might pollution and create the right economic dis/incentives.
If this was the standard model, you'd have greater utility as you wouldn't have siloed platforms and you'd get greater control over your personal data (as EU has already recognised and is legislating in any case).
Somewhat related -- a recent 'exit interview from social media' by one of the maintainers of 9front (which is an active fork of the Plan9 OS):
http://stanleylieber.com/2017/11/07/0/
Honestly, tribe.net wasn’t that bad. I remember the outrage when they first introduced ads onto their site. That was the moment they plummeted to obscurity. Everybody flocked to the ‘free’ alternatives.
In retrospect, at least their business model wasn’t opaque.
As the number of people that can freely access the internet grows, you see them focusing around a single social media platform. That's because social media strongly benefits from centralization, it's easier to talk to family and friends if you don't have to manage fifty different accounts.
The idea that there was a 'multitude of cultures' before Facebook is just wrong. There was the main social media platforms and a bunch of niche offshoots. That's why this is such a tricky problem to fix because even if Facebook vanished tomorrow, eventually there would be another platform which absolutely everyone would circle around.