Reclaiming the social in social media
TL;DR
This work argues that the harms commonly attributed to social media arise not from technologies supporting social connection but from their implementation within the attention economy, and proposes an architecture that does, making the attention economy not just discouraged but structurally impossible.
Abstract
Concerns about polarization, antisocial behavior, and mental health have broadly led to two responses to social media: adapting platforms through moderation and prosocial design, and restricting access to these platforms through age limits and comparable measures. Both address consequences of social media while leaving the attention-driven architecture intact. We argue that the harms commonly attributed to social media arise not from technologies supporting social connection but from their implementation within the attention economy. In response, we ask what a digital social environment built for genuine human connection would look like. From four principles - Purpose, Alignment, Transparency, and Access - we can derive four technical properties that fulfill these principles: Operator Blindness, Algorithmic Sovereignty, Operational Parity, and Verifiability. To the best of our knowledge, no deployed alternative satisfies all four. We propose an architecture that does, making the attention economy not just discouraged but structurally impossible. We explain how the resulting user experience refocuses on each user's individual social environment and differs from that of current platforms.
