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After the feed
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What replaces the feed? The Discourse has loosely revolved around that question for the past week or so, in light of Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition. Everyone wants to leave Twitter; nobody will leave Twitter. We all need a home on the internet, no matter how unhappy.
All the evils of algorithmic feeds have made an appearance in this news cycle—polarization, shadowbanning, corporate control. But there’s also been a general sense of feeling stuck. All sorts of journalists, writers, and other public figures feel like they have nowhere else to go, because their audience — and their influence — is so tied to one platform.
It’s not a unique sentiment, to this situation or this platform. YouTubers are stuck. Tumblr users are stuck. Twitch streamers are stuck, even as the platform attempts to siphon away their earnings. We all put down roots somewhere, often just out of curiosity. Then we find ourselves tied to a series of baffling decisions and cartoonish individuals with no way to leave.
We got here because it benefits the platforms. Platforms operate at the level of content, not people. There is value to Twitter, YouTube, et al. in having a continuous stream of stuff to show. They have a basic unit of discovery — the tweet, the video — with which to entice users, and their machinery is geared around that unit. The…
