Socials Should Be Open Source

It would undeniably improve humanity, yet big tech doesn't have the incentives to change.

It’s not controversial to characterize social media as deeply flawed and problematic. Social media is not in its optimal state to benefit humanity, despite how much we use and love it.

So how do we fix it?

the core problems with social media: it’s addictive, divisive, extractive. people are addicted to it, the content is divisive, and the service providers are extractive.

now, imagine instagram without the ads - pay an engineer $18/mo instead to remove them. imagine a fully customizable twitter feed with only smart people you know and like.

zk onchain apis integrated with partiful so you can opt-in + auto-connect on different social channels with whoever was at your party last night. a cross-platform super feed for your favorite tiktok/youtube/x/ig/newsletter creators.

a feed for brand discovery. a feed for music discovery. a feed for men's fashion. the ability to share your social algos with other people. what if we could try Elon Musk's X feed for a day? or buy it on gumroad? what if we could buy/sell pages and handles onchain?

that’s what open source could enable at scale. and no matter what, we'd still have the option to jump back into the wild west - via unfiltered 'mainstream' feeds - whenever we wanted to.

as i wrote about content filters a few weeks ago, i’ve been pretty excited about the potential of community posting and more customized user experiences overall, but progress is slow and limited.

So why don't we have more control over our online experience?

Like most things, it's an incentive issue. platforms are gatekept and user experiences are limited by their ability to increase usage and drive profits. and more than ever, we're noticing its negative impact on user experience.

example: i have zero interest in using X for political news/content (or any social platform really for that matter)

i much prefer radio/podcasts, youtube, newsletters, etc. for political commentary / election coverage. it gives me more control over what i consume

despite not wanting politics to clog up my feeds, despite spending 60 minutes last month running through my preferred topics and removing keywords and filtering other keywords from my timelines, i can’t seem to avoid political discourse here.

maybe because it shows i'm engaging with some of that content. but what if a user is actively trying to avoid that content but still keeps clicking on it?

even if i do figure out an effective way to do avoid a specific topic, users are still limited. you can't hire an engineer to fork the algo and make your own version.

social media has become a significant tool in modern life, and users should be able to customize their experience accordingly without taking away from the unique value of the social media company who's providing the underlying tech.

what if X got paid a small portion of revenue - sort of like a franchise model - for every new app built off its code?

it’s cool that X is charging subscription fees to allow users to reduce ads and increase customizability, and we all saw Meta follow with its release of “Meta Verified”, but even those subscription-based models are limited. A world where anyone can build anything on top of existing code releases infinitely more possibilities for how the world interacts with our digital identities.

Less brain rot, a level playing field for advertisers

If we enabled open source for socials, the benefits are clear. users could find apps that allow anyone to easily opt-in to specific content they like, carve out the brain rot, and own their data.

(video from joe pease)

this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for advertisers either. fighting for infinite attention on five major social media platforms wasn't the best advertising model to begin with.

there's a world where advertisers could leverage open source social to drive higher conversions. advertise directly to niche internet communities instead of targeting demographics. we could leverage zk to find a perfect target customer without exploiting personal data. and we can give them a chance to opt-out.

through open source, we can perhaps establish a more level playing field for advertisers as well - where there are hundreds of platforms to choose from rather than a select few controlling the rules behind the guise of a thousands of pages and creators.

we're already seeing a major shift toward content marketing, in-house creators, founder-led marketing, etc.

Ish Verduzco

the reason is simple - platform advertising is as competitive as ever and consumers are being force fed content all day long. it's a lose-lose.

there is a formula for a healthier internet culture (happier humans) that still promotes good business.

the only limit is your imagination. platforms for teens only. location-based feeds. community-based content for run clubs. the outcome? decreased anxiety and depression caused by overconsumption and information overload.

- but the incentives are not there.

Big tech doesn't have any incentives to change

Big tech doesn't have the incentives to change. if anything, big companies like Meta are burying themselves deeper into the trenches - maximizing usage and advertising everything.

it's become clear mainstream social media is now a public good. what good is the internet without instant social connectivity on major platforms? over time, we'll need to shift the incentives from profit-at-all-costs to "how can we make this the best communication tool for citizens?"

i know open source solutions already exist.

but the problem with the zora/lens/farcaster model is scale. onchain open-source social startups serve the purpose of providing a new alternative for a niche audience.

i don't think it's possible for Farcaster to achieve 1B users, or even a sizable portion of what X has.

there are many people who use on-chain socials because they want to own their data. but they still use instagram. why? because instagram serves a separate function. we can't just point to open source as a standalone solution and expect people to follow.

we cannot build a new city and leave the old one holding the keys to all the money and institutions and access behind. we need both.

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