Weekly Dwell #9

This week I spent time thinking about social media's role within society, and potentially new models we could take to create something more beneficial while still being engaging and enticing. This is a recurring theme within my day job, and something I have been and tend to think about often. Recently, I've been piecing together an idea that I'll be pitching as an op-ed moving forward, and more narrowly focused on how we can make better social media going forward. While there are a lot of great researchers and scholars focused on how we make existing social media platforms better, those are not as much my concern - my tldr thoughts on current platforms is that it is too late for them - they have IPO'ed and therefore are beholden to shareholders, so there isn't much we can do about how they are going to shape their business models beyond more strategic government regulation (which is still unlikely at this point).

What I'm most interested in is where we go from here -- namely, what new networks could - and should - look like and how we can ensure now that they are built to uphold those values. I'm starting to see more talk around the ideas of "small web" / "indieweb" which procures a lot of questions about how that lives within and is therefore in any way differentiated by the current web. I've been enjoying contemplations of what it means to be in a smaller subsection of the web, in a way that once we grappled around the dark web and shady corners, and is now becoming more enlightened spaces people want to spend their time. But outside of regulation, how are these spaces being built independently yet with some guidance to ensure they do not succumb to being like the dark web? How do we keep light on their faces and move out any shadows? I have a few thoughts about how we can achieve this that I'm shaking out and drafting up.