I feel like there should be an optimal social media.

There’s a lot of different websites and apps out there that appeal to different niches, which is fine, of course, but does bother me to a certain extent — objectively, all the things that can be done in each app, could be done in one app.

I’m a big fan of the decentralization of Lemmy and Mastodon; I also understand the appeal of both long-form posts with thread-like comments for specific communities and personal account micro-blogging; and I can say the same for a lot of other social media apps.

That being said, however, I find it very irritating that these apps are different apps and not just one big “social media” sphere. The Fediverse is attempting to (more or less) correct this, but it’s not being particularly successful. You can kind of interact with Mastodon from Lemmy and vice versa, but the other Fediverse social medias are struggling to integrate.

To a certain extent, I get that keeping different sorts of social media in their little boxes helps foster a sort of subculture for each one; at the same time, I feel like that could also be achieved by using a single app and just letting users customize their experience.

I know I’m talking about this like it’s easy and simple when it’s really not, but I do think it’s more-or-less doable.

Hopefully we get there, at some point.

  • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
    2·
    5 days ago

    I think this is another scenario of competing standards, as XKCD lampooned so well.

    It’s also a failure on Op’s part to recognize that change is constant, so while you could possibly design “The One App” today, tomorrow someone will come up with a new idea that simply couldn’t be integrated into existing apps, let alone a “One App”.

    It’s the waterfall vs agile project management issue. With waterfall, you’re pretty much committed to decisions made long ago, it’s incredibly difficult to change directions. So you end up finishing building something today based on ideas from the past, with little ability to include things learned along the way.