> I really think the future is private enclaves, closed forums, etc. with strict rules to try to keep out not just trolls and idiots but more importantly bots. We are living in the twilight of the open Internet, at least as a medium of any kind of meaningful communication. All that will be left on the “clearnet” is a social media influencer hustle culture driven hellscape where half the participants are bots anyway.
I think we're already starting to see this. Mastodon, Gemini, Discourse, forums, resurging interests in NNTP, FidoNet, etc. Even the public generally prefers group chats, Discords, TikTok, Snapchat, or to some extent IG because they're more private than FB or Twitter. I think creating a "global village" was interesting and empowering for most of humanity as a new thing that humans were capable of doing, but we all quickly realized that you can put a million people in a room together, but they won't have much to talk about together.
I have no doubt that private communities are going to be the future.
> I think creating a "global village" was interesting and empowering for most of humanity as a new thing that humans were capable of doing, but we all quickly realized that you can put a million people in a room together, but they won't have much to talk about together.
I have a much darker view. I think the global village was too easy a target for computer assisted large scale data driven con artistry.
Like I said: dark forest. All open systems with free entry will be destroyed by spam and abuse. No exceptions.
I feel like Qanon and January 6th was the end of the global village dream for many. The general public is just not ready to swim in a pool full of sharks using military grade psychological warfare on them. Why would they? Now it will only get worse since I’m sure every party and nation state is working on their own version.
I see a future where open social media is basically just propaganda shills and bots with armies of brainwashed followers fighting trench warfare forever… like a partly human version of DDOS botnet wars.
Its may be hard to swallow, but I suspect you are 100% correct in your prognosis. The open internet is a national security threat whose days are waning...at least between geopolitical rivals.
There were heaps of private BBSes in the 80s and 90, many of those were pirate sites but some were run by art groups for their members, churches and so on. So private digital spaces are not new by any means
Sure I'm not saying they're _new_. I was too young for the BBS era, but I visited plenty of private or semi-private forums in the 90s. I just mean that, in hindsight, I think most of us will view the Facebook-style concept of the "global village" as an unstable aberration of the 2000s rather than the primary way to socialize as many tech folks optimistically believed back then.
I think we're already starting to see this. Mastodon, Gemini, Discourse, forums, resurging interests in NNTP, FidoNet, etc. Even the public generally prefers group chats, Discords, TikTok, Snapchat, or to some extent IG because they're more private than FB or Twitter. I think creating a "global village" was interesting and empowering for most of humanity as a new thing that humans were capable of doing, but we all quickly realized that you can put a million people in a room together, but they won't have much to talk about together.
I have no doubt that private communities are going to be the future.