What Is The Ideal Social Network?

Every major social network has at least one problem with it, whether it be privacy, how it ranks content, or even how the users act on it. So what would the ideal social network look like? In this story, I am going to look at what this social network might look like.

We live in a world where a lot of our social interaction occurs on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our reliance on social networks has become so deeply rooted in our brains that on average, we now spend 142 minutes per day on these platforms. A lot of us blindly trust the companies behind these platforms with our most personal data, and this is a problem. In 2018, Facebook had more than 20 scandals revolving around privacy, ads, fake accounts, and more. Even after all these scandals, a large majority of people still trust Facebook and use it daily.

Ads

Everywhere you look on the internet or on your apps there seems to be an advert. Ads are what make companies like Facebook and Google so powerful, without them, they would most likely crumble. This goes for the majority of social networks, they require money to run, and ads are the best way to generate revenue without charging users.

Ads are, in a way, a necessary evil. It is not just the tech giants that would suffer without them, businesses, in general, would suffer. Online advertisements are the most efficient way to spread a brands message to people who may be genuinely interested in the company.

I don’t think that the ideal social network would have no ads. A solution would need to be found for displaying adverts to the correct users without invading the user’s privacy. Potentially this could be achieved in a similar way to how Brave serves ads, where your browsing history and personal data never leaves the browser.

Privacy

Your data should not be sold or accessible by third parties. Sure, data about users is needed for advertising purposes, this data should only be used by the platform. As soon as a platform allows access by third parties to a users data, they lose an element of control over what happens with that data.

Privacy controls such as who can view your content, contact you, etc… should be forefront in the user’s settings. These privacy settings should be as simple as possible so that every user can understand exactly who can see and do what. Most platforms are getting better at helping users with privacy settings. However, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in this area.

Many social networks allow you to choose whether your account is public or private. In most cases, private just means you need to accept who follows you. I believe that private accounts should be extended to be 100% private. By this, I mean that your account should not be visible at all, anywhere.

Lastly, for privacy, accounts should be very easy to delete. I am sure you are aware of how difficult it can be to delete accounts on websites, with some websites not even including this as an option. Google is a great example of making it easy for the user to completely delete their account and data.

Friends vs Followers

Should you have friends or followers? I believe that both options have their place and should be used. When creating your account, you should be asked whether you are using the platform for personal reasons or promotional reasons. If you are a personal user then you should have friends, if you are a promotional user, then you should have followers.

There is one issue with this, what if you are both? Should you have to create two different accounts? The simple answer is no, you should only need one account. Instagram is a great example of where this problem exists. You may use Instagram to interact with your friends as well as display a skill for the world to see. One of the biggest problems here is displaying different content and information to different users.

Facebook, on the other hand, has partially solved this problem by having both friends and followers as well as the option to choose who each individual post is displayed too. At the same time, Facebook has also complicated this by having pages. The worst part about this complication is that to have a page, you are required to have a personal account. If you run a business, you may want a page but not a personal account. To get that page, you effectively have to create two accounts, which brings us back to the original problem.

There is no simple solution to this problem, as it is inherently complex. Personal and promotional users require very different features, as well as the features that overlap but with slight differences.

Type Of Content

I don’t think that this social network should be limited to specific content types. I believe that users should be able to post text, photos, graphics, videos, and audio. This way, users can access everything they like in one place.

Quality Over Quantity

Ideally, a social network would favour users with high-quality posts over accounts who post more regularly. On Twitter, for example, you are more likely to gain a following if you tweet very regularly. Whereas on Instagram, high-quality posts will increase your chances.

When favouring quality, you still need a quantity metric. For example, a user posting three great posts a week should theoretically be favoured over someone posting one incredible post a week. However, it is a bit more complex than this. Should a user who posts a video that has taken a month to create and is amazing be favoured over someone posting multiple high-quality photos a month? The answer is complex because what posts are favoured shouldn’t a platform-wide decision, it should be user-specific.

Fake Accounts & News

Like with many of the points I have mentioned, fake accounts and news is a very difficult problem to solve. The best performing way of decreasing or even eliminating fake content would be to manually review and fact check everything, but this is inefficient and unrealistic. Algorithms can be trained to detect fake content, and are currently in use by major social networks. However, some content will always slip through algorithms.

Political Purposes

Social media gives politicians a huge platform to spread their message and build a following. Social platforms also enable the spread of misleading information and political impersonators. From my point of view, the ideal social network would have very strict guidelines for political accounts and manual review of every political advertisement that is created.

Part of the manual review should include an analysis of how the campaign is being funded as it should only be funded by the politician or party. In recent years there have been multiple stories around the world about political ads being bought by or funded from third parties and even members of other countries.

Trolls

Trolls, one of the internet’s worst creations. Nobody likes trolls, and unfortunately, there is no way to eradicate them. You can try deleting accounts which are proven to be trolls, but new accounts will be created.

Ideally, the social network would have no trolls, but they are inevitable and something that we will just have to ignore.

Addiction

Social media addiction is, in my eyes, a real problem. The feeling of needing to frequently check and browse social media is something that needs to be worked on. At the time it may seem like nothing, but when you look at the numbers you will probably start to wonder how much better your time could have been spent.

Unfortunately, I am not sure there is a full-proof way of solving this problem from the social network’s end. The platform should prominently make users aware of how much time they have spent. However, at the end of the day, it is down to the user to decide how much time they want to spend on the network.

Not For Profit

The social network should not be motivated by profits and shareholders. Having profit as one of the main motivations will always lead to decreased user experience and satisfaction in one way or another. In the case of this platform, the decrease would mainly come from the number of ads needed to sustain operations and generate profits.

Conclusion

The problems around social networks when it comes to providing a great user experience while respecting the privacy of users, generating revenue to keep running, and promoting the growth of businesses are extremely difficult. Because of these complexities, I don’t think that we will ever see a truly ideal social network, at least not any time soon.

We can’t rely on companies to handle our data safely or to remove questionable, dangerous, and illegal content. You should think twice before giving data and posting content, as well as take everything that is displayed to you with a grain of salt.

Never blindly assume that something is factually correct or genuine.