The Context: Social Network Paradoxes

Social networks are connecting over two billion people, soon hopefully all eight billion, and have changed the way we interact.

We like to complain about them, but our positions are contradictory.

We want connection limits to be lifted, but pretend that all the connections should be meaningful.

Algorithmic newsfeeds appear arbitrary to us, but we can’t absorb the information from an unfiltered firehose.

Freedom of expression is our absolute value, except that it must be tempered by a plethora of local legislation classifying what is legal.

The internet was born interoperable.

Future social networks must bring this fundamental feature back, in order to better evolve platforms that suit the needs of a rich, global civilization, and avoid the homogenized approach of a minimum common denominator.