Imagine if your domain was the only place you could post a message or opinion or news. Call it the social portal of your domain if you want. Your domain, your control, your podium, your rules, you own it all... including your voice.
Social would need to pull a page from search to scour the net for voices in portals (digital representation of your opinions), and then could use what's in your social portal to try and create conversations with. "Hey, McDonalds has a new toy meal theme", "Yo, Jane is trying a new recipe". These would not be on social media because Jane and McDonalds logged in and shared it there, or even because they have an account at all. They would be there because they were a voice heard in the wild, and would try to see if others want to engage in discussion about it.
You would go to social to READ, but NOT POST NEW CONTENT. You wouldn't work for social, though your domain's social portal credentials would work to log you in to REPLY ONLY.
In your voice portal, on your domain, you can signal if this is a global message, a regional message, about a specific topic etc. YOU decide, and let social add your message in front of people who want to read more about that topic.
You want to follow someone directly? Great, add their @domain to your domain "watched" list.
Multiple people working for a domain? Great, Jane@domain, Joe@domain etc.
Point is, you control the voice, on YOUR domain where you retain control in every way forever, and it's suddenly social's job to find voices to echo, not yours to try and build an account with little control.
Social can show ads on the conversation pages they create, monetizing doesn't change. Not your problem, but you can put different ads with your content on your domain. It's your voice.
Tired of getting yelled at about trying to game their system? Even trying would be gaming yourself, go ahead and put pharmaceutical nonsense on your domain, but your voice would be diminished and eventually go silent naturally. It flips the switch from having to build up a voice to having a voice only you can diminish with spam.
You get the idea, all that has to happen is someone builds it, then all social networks can be relegated to the RSS system they actually are, minus owning your voice.
Generative AI is not your problem, it’s a problem for search and social to work out on their domains. If we're going to make changes, may as well make them good for everyone, not just search and social. You never know when a new owner, new rules or other nonsense could come along and upend things, but if the voice is on your domain, owned by you, it will shine as brightly alongside the content you create.
Worried generative AI may replace search, and impact social, and leave you with no traffic? Services like chatGPT can't currently throw you an @domain where they found an idea.... because your voice isn't there, yet. They can't quote social, either, because... which one? You might be on them all, you might not be you, your account might be a bot stealing from elsewhere.
Trust me, if everyone could only speak from their domain it would solve so many issues, including checking for authority... and the tech is there, it just doesn't benefit the billion-dollar companies wanting you to help build THEIR domains by making you speak on theirs, not your own. Make social read and reply only and so many problems go away, I'd join it, my voice is on my domain which should be the only official place to hear new messages from me, it's mine.
About Twitter, Musk etc.
To point out the obvious, the user agreement hasn't changed, and it's the same as with domains. If you abandon a domain, it gets recycled. If you abandon a Twitter account, it gets recycled according to the user agreement, AFTER a 90-day wait and multiple reminders.
Not recycling Twitter accounts was as a courtesy, in case you returned. 1.5 Billion unused accounts, and content associated with it, permanently sitting on Twitter servers, is a lot. Courtesy revoked.
Web 3.0 and eminent domain, making twitter property belong to users? There is no legal basis or precedence for it. In fact, the people screaming for it have a hard time even writing Twitter (T) out of disdain for (EM) owning it, but he owns it in part because of the yelling that was drowning out more and more voices.
John Mu Twitter profile says - "Mostly not here". It's perfect, it illustrates the problem with social media completely. If all of Johns' posts were on his site, and social went there because he's always there, problem solved. He wouldn't even need a Twitter account, unless he wants to reply to parts of the conversation.
Hating and making threats is pointless, work the problem, it's time for a better solution. Giving you total control of your voice, on your own domain, would be a good start. Current social media companies have no interest in changing their model, it's profitable, but is it working in YOUR best interests? Apparently not.
