In 2024, social media will shrink.
Of course, it is not low in terms of penetration. As the United States goes through an election that is likely to be both divisive and often disconnected from reality, social media will once again become a battleground for public opinion and perception. But the platforms on which these conversations take place will be smaller in scale, more diverse and less interconnected.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump realized he could speak directly to an audience of tens of millions on Twitter. Trump, who left the scene after the Jan. 6 riots, moved to the much smaller Truth Social network, whose main selling point seemed to be his presence. Trump lost something valuable when he got out of his slump: the ability to speak to the “big room” — a platform that included a wide range of people interested in public affairs.
Big room spaces, like Twitter and Instagram, are a constant battleground for attention. They’re valuable to activists who want messages like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter to reach new converts to the movement, and to influencers who build power and revenue by building an audience. But they are inherently conflicting spaces, as people with different views argue about what kind of speech is appropriate for the space.
Trump is speaking to a smaller room now, but one where almost everyone who hears him agrees with him. He will never be removed from Truth Social because his statements, no matter how inflammatory, are the reason the network exists.
Knowingly or unknowingly, other platforms are moving in the same direction. Elon Musk’s forced destruction of Twitter turns it into a smaller room, a safe space for extremists who make it unsafe for those who don’t share their views. Reddit, long one of the most exciting spaces for informed and topical conversation, is losing users by implementing unpopular and masked policies in hopes of generating much-needed revenue. Some subreddits are migrating to Discord, where their conversations don’t overlap with the thousands of other threads on Reddit, but they have complete control over the rules they choose.
Networks of small rooms can be very important spaces for communities to find support and solidarity. When you’re looking for support for living with diabetes or without alcohol (two struggles I personally struggle with), you’re not looking for confrontation, you’re looking for camaraderie, comfort, and constructive advice. Millions of us find these spaces in subreddits, Facebook groups, or even on niche social networks like Archive of One’s Own, which connects 5 million fan fiction writers and fans every month.
But small rooms have one big downside: they’re as useful to Nazis as they are to weavers. These conversations, shielded from outside scrutiny, can normalize extreme views and push people deeper into dark topics they’ve been interested in for a while.
We need networks with small rooms – they introduce strangers to each other, build social capital and connections between people who may never interact in the physical world. But they further divide the public sphere, which means the 2024 election may be even more lopsided than we’ve seen so far in our social media age.
