Social Quitting. Forthcoming in the January, 2023 issue… | by Cory Doctorow | Medium

As I type these words, there is a mass exodus underway from Twitter and Facebook. After decades of eye-popping growth, these social media sites are contracting at an alarming rate. In some ways, this shouldn’t surprise us. All the social networks that preceded the current generation experienced this pattern: Sixdegrees, Friendster, MySpace and Bebo all exploded onto the scene. One day, they were sparsely populated fringe services, the next day, everyone you knew was using them and you had to sign up to stay in touch with them. Then, just as quickly, they imploded, turning into ghost towns, then punchlines, then forgotten ruins. This didn’t happen to Facebook and Twitter. Both attained a scale and durability that exceeded the networks that preceded them. For many people, it seemed like the operators of these services had cracked the nut of making eternal social media. Maybe it was their access to the capital markets, which let them hire better engineering teams? Maybe it was the singula

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