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Stopping or using less social media can be a great New Year’s resolution. Studies have shown benefits to physical and mental health, with many people who have done it permanently or temporarily report increased productivity, focus, and well-being.
But a so-called digital detox is not so easy. Many of us use social media to help us stay connected with friends and family and keep up with the news and online debates. The problem is that algorithms on all major platforms designed to increase the time users spend in apps tend to drag us into a whirlwind of commercial and funny images and videos.
The solution for Elselien Kuepers, a 33-year-old Dutch doctor, was to switch to a less popular non-profit app. “It gives me a relaxed, more authentic experience,” she told DW.
The app BeReal that Kuepers uses allows you to post one snapshot each day. Sends a notification at a random time every day and he gives 2 minutes for the user to take a picture of themselves and post it. “Two minutes is not enough to stage an artificially good-looking picture,” she said. “This app also does not allow the use of filters, so what you post is a true demonstration of what you are currently doing.”
On her timeline, you’ll see photos of people playing board games, walking, and eating. increase. “I think it’s even more exciting than Instagram, which is full of edited, perfectionist images,” she said.
BeReal exploded in popularity in the summer of 2022, ranking as the 10th most downloaded social media platform. In response, countless start-ups have surged in recent years to varying degrees of success or the opportunity to compete with the giant tech giants.
Innovation solves typical big technical problems
The controversy surrounding most classic platforms like Tiktok, Facebook, and YouTube stems from how their algorithms and business models work.
The time the average user spends on social media apps is fragmented and sold by social media companies to advertisers. Platforms analyze user data to optimize apps and in some cases sell it to third parties.
This business model is the main factor behind most well-known social media problems. These include negative mental health effects and addictive potential, data privacy issues, the spread of misinformation, and the formation of echo chambers to which users are primarily exposed. Ideas and users who subscribe to their own views. A research paper published in December 2022 by Christian Montag, a professor of molecular psychology at the University of Ulm in southwestern Germany, and his colleagues points to a link to Big’s Tech’s functional model.
“As long as users pay for social media services with their own data, I don’t think these issues will be resolved,” he told DW.
How a new app tries to solve a typical social media problem
Alternative social media initiatives attempt to circumvent this problem by designing distributed network structures in which, instead of algorithms, users or user communities control the flow of content across platforms.
Mastodon is one of them. Instead of one main server, a federation of interconnected servers hosts accounts and what they publish, each with its own rules and protocols.
Known as Fediverse, this configuration allows users on one server to interact with users and groups on other servers. Compared to platforms like Twitter, Mastodon’s community has more freedom to set its own guidelines. However, their content is mostly made available to the public via users who are members of multiple communities, so it won’t be a closed circle like the existing Echo Chambers.
Like many other apps with a similar structure, Mastodon attempts to delegate the decision to remove harmful or abusive posts to user votes. Some apps leave the decision to randomly selected app judges.
After Elon Musk took over Twitter, Mastodon rose to prominence as one of the apps users who left Twitter began signing up for.
Other alternative apps such as Steem and Mind incorporate blockchain technology into their monetization capabilities. Crypto tokens can be used by users to reward or commission contributions. Because this is traceable, it is often more transparent than regular transactions. This means that all transactions happen within the platform and it is clear how and by whom the posts are sponsored.
Some experts question whether Fediverse-based apps are sustainable. The decentralized nature of these platforms can make it difficult to moderate content and deal with inappropriate or harmful posts. It can be a low and comfortable environment.
But Montag is optimistic about the future of these experiments. “I think his Fediverse could be the future,” he said, pointing to the fact that it will not be easy to compete with the current major platforms.
While the new app has a complex system that has usability issues, the current giant has been shaped by years of testing to provide users with a more convenient and immersive experience. Montag added.
Treat social media as a public good
As startups strive to create better alternatives, some groups and initiatives are trying to hold the current tech giants accountable. The Center for Human Technology (CHT) is one of them, campaigning for stricter policies to govern social media companies, pushing them into their business models and eliminating disruptive features. doing.
Regulating the social media giants and mitigating the damage they cause is as important as market innovation, said Montag. Besides mitigating the damage to big tech companies, the introduction of regulation could allow new start-ups to compete. He said there needs to be a protocol that allows users to communicate across platforms in the same way that two people are on the phone with different providers.
“Scientists continue to debate whether it is best to characterize social media as a public good. In such a scenario, paying a subscription fee to a decentralized platform that respects our privacy I have to imagine.”
Decoupling social media from business models that rely on user data and time is the only way to achieve a “healthier” social media, he stressed.
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