> If we're lucky, that means a federated, open, mostly-ad-and-suggestion-free open source social media experience can fill the power vacuum for intimate, interpersonal, high-latency communication over the internet.
I don't have as much hope for such a thing. To me, this trend is also a reflection of perhaps the societal devaluing of IRL social connections.
In a world where encountering "new people" was novel, and typically done only In Real Life, maintaining that connection using an online component had value. You may not encounter that person again, and good connections are rare, so you want to keep in touch. However, over time, the internet has made it trivial to encounter new people, even if the encounters themselves are more trivial than the previous In Real Life meetings were. Perhaps there was a two-way conversation before. Well now, you just read their tweets or watch their videos and click a button to follow.
Tracking real-life encounters isn't as valuable as it once was, especially when you can find an online substitute who is actively creating "content" to keep you engaged.
The newer connections are also way more transactional than they used to be. Just about everyone is selling something or trying to use their channels to promote themselves somehow.
I think there's an interesting overall trend in here between the fall of social networks and societal devaluing of real life connections (as well as a trend of them being more transactional), but I'm not an academic, so these are all just hunches.