Can it ever be the way it was?

Social media feels like it's in the throes of decay. Not just one platform, but multiple platforms. We've lost the social aspect and are only getting the media, and the general vibe I'm getting from people is that they're tired.

The frustration with Instagram is palpable with folks on Threads. Creators are tired of their content not being shown to their followers and followers are tired of not being able to see content from people that they're actually following. Something happened in the last month and views on Instagram tanked for a good chunk of the user base. It's tanked so badly that people aren't even wanting to post on the platform anymore.

From a content perspective, it's also become a bit of a nightmare purely because of generative AI. "Is this an AI influencer?" Jhey asked me the other night. It was hard to tell but I was pretty sure it was (the blinking of eyes didn't seem natural), and it was shilling an AI app that's been associated with cheating during interviews. Another account popped up shilling the same app, with a different "woman" this time, and we're pretty confident it's also gen AI. I don't want to look at fake humans and have to question whether the content I'm looking at is generative AI because people are definitely not tagging their posts with an AI label.

I find myself nostalgic for not only the Instagram of 2014-2018, but the general web of that time. Influencers were kind of a thing, but people still had their blogs as their primary source of content; Instagram was only a supplement to that. So was Twitter.

And maybe I'm viewing the past through rose tinted glasses, but I felt my interactions on socials were in general...better.

My tech bubble is on Bluesky which is why I keep returning to scroll. I did delete the app from my phone, and I visit from my browser, but my general opinion as time passes is that Bluesky is problematic in its own ways, especially at the C-suite level and with content moderation.

But outside of those issues, at the content level I feel frustrated. I don't think I felt this way even when I had a larger following on Twitter. The replies to my posts on Bluesky have become increasingly "Well Actually" and "Here's why your opinion is wrong" and quite frankly, it's exhausting.

I find myself trying to figure out why replies have gotten worse. I'm using Bluesky very much like I used Twitter in the beginning -- like a microblog. I share random bits about tech, about my personal life (which at the moment is very much consumed by pregnancy), and replies from strangers on Bluesky are so much more negative and mansplainy than on Threads.

I wish I could figure out why. Is it because I'm a woman? Is it because I no longer have "Microsoft" in my bio? Do people really have that hard of time scrolling by if they don't have anything kind to say? I don't know.

But the people are tired. Tired of posting on platforms that hide their content, tired of features no one asked for and that are being shoved down their throats to maximize ads and specific types of content (e.g. the push for Reels), and people are tired of generative AI.

The praise for Pinterest was abundant when they rolled out the ability to block AI content in certain categories.

People are crying out for the social aspect of social media to return. They want to connect with humans, not bots or computers, and I think we're still clinging to social media as a way that facilitated that connection in an era that is seeing a loss of physical third places. We turned to social media at the height of the COVID pandemic but lost so much when we returned to physical spaces. We're clawing for connection while billionaires try to force us into appeasing their algorithms.

So where do we go from here? Can it ever be the way it was before? Probably not. But we can try and make things better now by trying to find connection through physical means, not just digital. By increasing our empathy. By taking a moment to pause before replying when you're scrolling. By celebrating each other. By complimenting a stranger.

Maybe once we rebuild our ability to connect in person, we can dismantle the hellscape of an echo chamber social media has become and bring it back around to being just another tool to connect with community, but not the only way.