The problem is getting to critical mass: every service has to start somewhere but if I join and only see uninteresting stuff, I probably won’t stick around long enough for you to follow me, etc. Niche services have that bootstrapping problem where they need early users but also don’t grow if their primary adopters are people who were banned elsewhere (e.g. Gab) or are very tightly ideological (Truth Social has a whole political movement pushing it but is still failing to catch on because even most Republicans don’t want shouting 100% of the time).
Discovery is a challenge for sure. I just wonder how far a service could get with an entirely user-driven discovery, follows, search, etc.
Platforms get into the business of censorship when they attempt to currate content (handpicked or algorithmic). Engagement is obviously much lower if you aren't running an algorithm designed to hook everyone on doom scrolling, but plenty of people still happily use an RSS reader and just go away when their list of new posts is empty.
But where did those people go away to? My memory is that we moved from web rings and blog rolls to social media sites which increasingly made certain that you’d never lack for new content. Even if you’re not doomscrolling, this feels like humanity’s equivalent to moths chasing the brightest light around.
That's my recollection as well, and I take the same lesson from it with regards to human nature.
There is still a comparatively small bit active community of webrings, blog rolls, etc today. What I'm less certain of is whether the driver really consumers chasing the brightest light or platforms taking advantage of basic psych tricks to drive addictive behavior (or both).
I’d definitely say both. The social networks combined easier / more polished experiences to get a lot of people over but then they really ramped up the social tricks to get people to stay longer and look at more ads.
Sure, but you may never have found yourself on Twitter to begin with if it was full of neo Nazis. It’s like showing up to an important meeting in the wrong attire - how you present matters.
The issue isn’t hiding it away - be it by user or other - it’s that it hampers growth in general when you’re all of a sudden the platform of the deranged. It’s fair to question whether it’s seeing actual use outside of those communities.
(It might be telling that we’ve spent this many comments discussing it rather than pointing out e.g GNOME/Blender/etc use it - it’s not like it’s all bad)
A Twitter alternative could be full of neo-nazis, butbif my feed is only populated with people I follow them I would never know or care.