Spitballing a bit here. Why do they have to be websites? That is to say, why do they have to be on the "web", HTML over HTTP, at all? This seems like the default way to do things to us now, but if you think about it, what most of us fundamentally want with a social media site like Facebook (not Twitter, that's different) is just to communicate and keep up with our friends and family. That's why people flock to any app that gets mindshare: Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, that allows them to do these things.
What does an alternative look like? Something like a shared Discord for friends and family to use, divided into groups or "servers". (That was the key insight of Google+, that people don't have one online presence for their family, close friends, coworkers, acquaintances, etc. It failed for other reasons.) The extra feature you need is just a shared searchable history to find media, albums of photos, etc.
I think the points the article makes are valid, but better understood as a criticism of Twitter. It effectively asks, if what we want is to post stuff online for other people to read, why not use the open web for that rather than [centralized service]. Thing is, people are already working on alternatives to this and not everyone needs to use the same thing for it to be successful. ActivityPub, websites using RSS for synchronization, Neocities, etc etc. So my response is that there are two sorts of things we use social media for, and there's no reason to try to do them both with one site.
I think I'm going to look into open Discord alternatives, and try to get some family and friends interested. Worst case, it will be an interesting experiment I'll learn something from.
What does an alternative look like? Something like a shared Discord for friends and family to use, divided into groups or "servers". (That was the key insight of Google+, that people don't have one online presence for their family, close friends, coworkers, acquaintances, etc. It failed for other reasons.) The extra feature you need is just a shared searchable history to find media, albums of photos, etc.
I think the points the article makes are valid, but better understood as a criticism of Twitter. It effectively asks, if what we want is to post stuff online for other people to read, why not use the open web for that rather than [centralized service]. Thing is, people are already working on alternatives to this and not everyone needs to use the same thing for it to be successful. ActivityPub, websites using RSS for synchronization, Neocities, etc etc. So my response is that there are two sorts of things we use social media for, and there's no reason to try to do them both with one site.
I think I'm going to look into open Discord alternatives, and try to get some family and friends interested. Worst case, it will be an interesting experiment I'll learn something from.