I sometimes feel alone in my dislike of algorithmically driven social media. I find more often then not when I allow myself to get hooked into some spiral of videos or threads that I just do not feel good afterwards, like my brain has been high jacked. This is even the case if it is content that I enjoy consuming like BJJ tutorials or instructional videos on some other topic I find interesting. So for the most part I try and avoid using social media which makes me feel better but also leaves me feeling like there is another way.
I see a potential future that is not about optimizing for time spent on platform but for good done within your community or for yourself. I can see a platform that helps each individual develop skills that can help solve problems that other individuals in the community are facing right now. And this platform would help connect these individuals to get the problem resolved. This could also apply to community issues at every level, helping to bring people together to improve the area that they live in.
This platform could help enforce a set of principles that would guide individuals and communities to make good decisions while solving problems to avoid creating future problems. A continuously updated set of educational criteria on how to approach problems in a manor that not only comes to a solution for the problem but with a set of criteria to solve the problem within. A framework that helps guide everyone to solutions that are considering potential environmental impacts, community impacts at every level.
The community that could be built out on such a platform could have experts in all fields that could lend their expertise to ensure that problems are thought through thoroughly and potential roadblocks are caught early. This structured community could start dealing with problems quickly and effectively with a scientific approach that ensures the best decisions possible are being made with the current data set available. These solutions would then need to be monitored to ensure that as the current understanding of the problem changes that solutions are reevaluated AND iterated upon to make sure that problems are actually being solved.
These ideas stem from a growing frustration that we know the answers to so many problems and yet are unable to organize and come together to bring about their resolution. I am sure that I have overlooked many aspects of this new platform but firmly believe that as long as we know that we will make mistakes and agree to iterate and to stop letting problems languish that if this type of platform grew in popularity it could result in unbelievable amounts of positive change throughout the country or even the entire world. It would all start with each of us remembering that even just helping your neighbor bring in their groceries YOU have made the world a little bit better of a place to live in.