In 2024, social media will be smaller.
Of course, that influence is no small thing: As America navigates a divisive and likely out-of-touch election, social media will once again become a battleground for public opinion and perception, but the platforms on which these conversations take place will likely be smaller, more diverse and less connected.
As the 2016 election approached, Donald Trump discovered that Twitter let him speak directly to an audience of tens of millions. After the January 6th riots, Trump was booted from Twitter and moved to the much smaller Truth Social, a network whose main selling point seemed to be Trump's presence. When Trump was booted off the platform, he lost something valuable: the ability to speak to the “big room,” a platform that reaches a wide audience interested in public issues.
Big room spaces like Twitter and Instagram have always been battlegrounds for attention: They're invaluable for activists looking to reach new advocates for movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, and for influencers who build power and revenue by growing their audiences. But they're also inherently divisive, as people with different perspectives fight over what voices are appropriate for the space.
Trump now speaks in smaller rooms, but nearly everyone who hears him is tuning in. He'll never be booted off Truth Social because that's what the network exists for, no matter how inflammatory his comments may be.
Consciously or not, other platforms are moving in the same direction. Elon Musk's obsessive Twitter-sabotage is turning it into a small room: a safe place for extremists but a dangerous place for those who don't share their views. Reddit, once one of the most stimulating places for informed, topical conversation, is losing users as it introduces unpopular Musk-style policies in hopes of generating much-needed revenue. Some subreddits are moving to Discord, where they have full control over the rules they choose to ensure their conversations don't overlap with thousands of other topics on Reddit.
A network of small rooms can be a vital space for a community to find support and solidarity. When you seek support for living with diabetes or sober (two issues I personally struggle with), you're looking for friendship, comfort, and constructive advice, not confrontation. Millions of people find these spaces in subreddits, Facebook groups, and even special-purpose social networks like Archive of One's Own, which connects 5 million fanfiction writers and fans every month.
But the tiny room has a big drawback: It's not just convenient for knitters, it's also convenient for Nazis. Insulated from outside scrutiny, these conversations can normalize extreme viewpoints and lead people to delve even deeper into the dark topics that briefly interested them.
We need cubicle networks, which introduce strangers to each other, building social capital and connections between people who would never interact in real life. But they also further fragment the public sphere, and the 2024 election may be even more divisive than previous ones in the social media era.