It has been frustrating (to put it mildly) to see social media platforms devolve into more advertisements than actual content. More "suggested posts" than things I actually signed up to see.
Facebook gets worse with every update. X/Twitter is alright. The video platforms are fine for video, but not much else. Platforms with features have horrible algorithms. Platforms with decent content control have no features.
Just been doing some thinking on what an ideal solution might look like.
The perfect social media platform would offer:
- A general newsfeed of posts from people, businesses, and groups that you follow.
- The ability to easily filter that newsfeed. (Strict chronological, suggested, only people, only groups, recently interacted with, "I'm broke right now, please stop showing me $6,000 lawnmowers," only text posts, only text posts above a certain length, etc.)
- A phone app that easily allows photos and videos to be uploaded, as well as basic editing of both.
- Fully customizable personal pages with color editing, auto-play videos, etc.
- Privacy features to easily limit the accessibility of your content.
- A free tier that is ad supported but does not snoop on your other activity. It could perhaps be capped on number of photos/videos per month.
- A paid tier that removes ads.
- A more expensive tier that unlocks more data-heavy things like livestreaming.
- An open market for ad placement on specific pages or groups. These are not excluded by the paid tiers, because they directly support specific creators. (Similar to how people on YouTube can say "This video is sponsored by..." in their content, whether you have ads on YouTube or not.)
- A user experience that does not assume I want to be invited to every group and every chat on the platform.
- A convenient guide to set up and understand the platform and how to use it. Yes, a tutorial. Yes, I expect this day one.
- Content moderation controls that actually do something. (Nudity on/off, graphic violence on/off, make creators responsible for labeling)
My thoughts on this evolve with time, but that's how I see it today. There's a strong push for "decentralized" platforms from some people, but decentralization itself is not compelling. The features and user experience are king, period.
I would gladly donate time to provide UX feedback on a platform that could make this happen.
