On a recent Sam Harris Podcast, Cal Newport said he believes that the existing click-driven, “engagement and addiction” business model of the Internet is nearing the end of its life cycle. He suggested that the next phase will be more niche focused, with many sites that serve a much smaller number of users, reminiscent of the days of the early Internet bulletin boards and user groups.
He acknowledged that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok would still have their place on the Internet, but that in this next phase, they wouldn’t have nearly everyone in their networks. For example, he thought Twitter would contract to become a niche service for journalists and news media.
I wonder if that will happen. I like to imagine that it will because it is how I use the Internet today. I don’t use any of the big social media platforms. I subscribe to a few, niche user forums. My contributions online are limited to this blog – which has a few hundred readers annually and an occasional post to one of the user forums.
I like not being anonymous online when I’m having a conversation. Just like I wouldn’t have a deep conversation with a random stranger in real life, there’s little value in having one online. Niche communities, both online and IRL, tend to minimize trolls and unacceptable behavior.
I was listening to and interview with Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety today in which he discussed Twitter trolls. He said that his team could anticipate when a Twitter troll storm would happen because they would see users on site like Forchan openly organizing and planning a troll storm. He said these users were primarily teenagers whose sole focus was to create disruption and cause problems. Roth said his team had analyzed the data on this so many times, that it was crystal clear.
How interesting. We hear so much about “bots”, conspiracy theories and nefarious foreign agents doing this. This was the first time I heard anyone other than Joe Rogan saying the majority of trolls are teenage kids “talking sh!t”.
It’s kind of obvious in some ways. It’s why I don’t read user or leave comments on any general sites on the Internet. The commentary there is either politically divisive, argumentative, inane, trite or obvious trolling to create agitation.
Many things seem cool when they are small. Small businesses are great when I know the owner, when they know my name and my order. Small online forums give me a chance to interact with the founders, writers and specialists. I like small.
Big has its place too. When I don’t need personal service, Amazon is incredibly convenient and efficient. When I’m checking the weather, Accuweather gives me solid forecasts for my region and shows trends that could impact me in the next few days. When I’m shipping a package, nothing beats FedX and UPS. But I’m not building a relationship with any of these companies. If a better one comes along, I’ll jump to it.
So perhaps Cal Newport is right.
We see the same thing online as users flocked to and eventually abandoned AOL, MySpace, Napster, Facebook and others. It will be interesting to see what’s next.