Is Social Media a Misnomer?

By R. S. Doiel, 2025-11-02

Walled gardens are not normally social. Their walled to keep people inside separated from those outside. The largest social media services on the web are arguably walled gardens.

The largest services run by the likes of Meta, Alphabet, X and ByteDance rely algorithms to determine what a client sees next. Those algorithms apparent purpose isn’t to facilitate communication but to capture attention. Communication between two or more people could be social but the attention orientation of the algorithms changes the relationship to one of broadcast.

The practices that have evolved around these systems of likes, dislikes, and re-posting do not serve communication as much as they serve the corporation operating the application. Is shouting a tool of better communication? Is it a symptom of a breakdown in communication? Isn’t this the core purpose of capturing attention in opposition to actual communication?

The web can be a communications medium and can support actual social connection. Intent and how the software is used determine the outcome. The web can be a platform to host conversations. It is not, nor should it be, the only means of social contact. It is not, nor should it be, the only way we communicate.

Maybe this is why I’ve gravitated away from social media platforms. Communication isn’t happening there when the platform reverts to the broadcast model. The broadcast model thrives on the game of attention capture. Being captured is a lonely experience even when we are with other captives.

We’ve been at this choice point before. In the age of physical newspapers a paper’s issue didn’t grow after publication. The amount of attention it could capture was limited. There might be a new issue published but a single issue could only capture your attention for the time it took to read the parts you were interested in. In fact most people didn’t read the whole paper. Most people read the sections they were interested in. The paper was designed as a broadcast medium to make that easy. Example, in North America the Sunday funnies were there for the children to read. Papers were used for antisocial purposes too. They came to be used to encourage wars, enraging people to action, as a platform for propaganda. In my region of North America the Hearst corporation was famous for this. Enough monetary value was acquired by William Randolph Hearst he built a castle on the West Coast of California. In that era the concept of “broadcasting” was was already understood.

Even with the introduction of radio and television, the broadcast initially wasn’t twenty for hours a day seven days a week. As a result there were time periods where assumptions were made about the audiences watching and “content programming” were directed in that way. The content programmer’s goal was to gain audience in the form of viewers and listeners. The lessons learned in the old media were applied again in the new media. Example, “if it bleeds it leads”. The buying and selling of attention was perfected further.

Each time it became cheaper to “publish” we’ve had an opportunity to choose how the medium evolves. We keep choosing attention consumption and we reap the results of that. If we accept monetization we collectively choose a broadcast platform. Does it need to remain that way? I think we are at a new choice point.

A recent innovation is the financialization of large language models. They are structured as centralized broadcast platforms just like before. They has been promoted under the banner of “AI” or “Artificial Intelligence”. There is a cost to this. Like before the interest of the people are being swept under the carpet in the quest of monetization interests of the platform owner. Our walled garden social media is an expression of that choice. We feel its impact. Few are asking the serious questions. Some ask important question only to have that leveraged to capture more attention. Real conversations are needed.

Large language models are expensive. The models have literal costs in terms of physical space to house the computes, network, and cooling systems that form data centers. Those data centers consume energy that could be used by homes, villages, towns and cities. Is this an acceptable use of resources? The financialized of language models have a human cost too. They are extremely effective attention consumption machines. That already is being abused (examples encouraging suicide, aiding crime and propaganda). To used Cory Doctorow’s terminology, AI has hit the enshittification point. The bubble will burst. There will be a price paid collectively as a result. We have choices to make. How do we minimize the cost individually that we pay collectively as a result of the folly of a few people chasing yet more profit.

When communications technology becomes financially interesting and then becomes financialized it moves from socially useful to the broadcast model. The broadcasts model is dominated by the requirement selling our attention. It does not have the requirement of facilitating actual communication. Corporate interests are to financially benefit those controlling the corporation and to absolve them of responsibility for negative out comes. Broadcast medium need another countervailing force aside from financialization to remain a collective good. As we enter the second quarter of the twenty first century we have choices to make. If we don’t make them explicitly they will be made for us. Is the communication, the act of connecting people to people, more important then making money? Can broadcast be used as a force of good when we rely only on financialization to implement it? How do we choose to use the technology is how we express that decision?

Is our current social media system a misnomer? Does the integration of large language models show this off? Is it really a broadcast platform? Do we want to participate in the attention economy where we are tenant and product? Is it time to call it something other than “social media”?