Everyone wants to blame Mark Zuckerberg for polarization and fake news. But if social media were fragmented into a thousand smaller companies instead of a few big ones, wouldn't polarization and fake news be worse?
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Part of the problem with Facebook was that by having their algorithms reward engagement, they also rewarded polarization and fake news. The solution is to be more mindful of the incentives such algorithms create, not necessarily to break up Facebook.
That is true. But smaller social networks would also optimize for engagement. The algorithms aren't hard. And some of them might be a lot less scrupulous about how they did it.
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Facebook helps *a lot* to normalize antisocial behavior. After all it's on Facebook so it's mainstream and socially acceptable. Fringe networks, on the other hand, make easier to flag such behavior as socially unacceptable.
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Not every smaller network would have to answer to shareholders or have exponential growth targets no matter what the cost.
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Those would be the ones that no one uses. No one wants to use the 497th best social media network.
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Could there be a trade off between engagement of content creators and engagement of content consumers? The optimum for creators may not be the same as optimum for consumers, although there is some correlation. IMO, there is a room for platforms like this
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Telegram is an example. On Telegram, there are public channels, which by default are like read-only anonymous blogs with no comments and no likes. Telegram is founded by a founder of http://vk.com (Russian FB clone). This decision must be deliberate.
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Smaller social network have a potential to be more insular. The common wisdom says that people need more exposure to opposing viewpoints. Could it be wrong? Engagement with small tight-knit groups of people may be better. If you optimize for this, you get different product
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Small social networks wouldn’t have the frequency of engagement, depth of your interaction with content, or breadth of your connections to optimize from either though. That’s why size is an issue.
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Small social networks would never cause things like Pizzagate during the last election, or Hillary’s fake illness. ( small networks already exist in local tv networks and communities, always have in one way or another, news papers )
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