The social media apocalypse

“In the new world slowly emerging by the end of 2018, people begin to read long 18th-century English novels, go to the symphony, and watch 12 to 14 hours of terrestrial television a day. They also play board games as a family.”

2018 will be the year social media ends.

Bold! But no more foolish, in retrospect, than my 2010 prediction that The New York Times would abandon its paywall after a mere few more months of public outrage and financial pressure. Unlike that dour piece of speculation, this is a prediction I would actually like to see come true. 2017 has been a depressing year. Here’s to hope. 

Twitter first. In April 2018, following the release of the Mueller report and Trump’s blanket pardon of not only his entire family but himself, Twitter management will finally suspend @realDonaldTrump. But it’s too late — the political backlash and upheaval from the decision send Twitter’s stock price tumbling. The company finally sells itself to Circa for pennies on the dollar, but the entire userbase and profile information is set on fire by a departing engineer. Circa is left with nothing. 

Facebook, surprisingly, ends sooner. Well, not really ends. In February, the company will be forcibly nationalized following more revelations about the extent of Russian hacking and espionage carried out by a clever manipulation of website algorithms. Mark Zuckerberg tries to shut the News Feed down completely, but not before Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz make common cause in the Senate to appropriate Facebook’s liquid assets, its digital data, and its property. Both the GOP and the newly rebranded National Farmer-Labor-Democratic Party have a very different understanding of what it means for “Facebook to serve the state”…but crisis makes for strange bedfellows.   

Instagram goes the way of Facebook, its corporate parent. In the space left free by the transformation of the photo-sharing  platform, Marissa Mayer tries to revitalize the recently spun-off Flickr. She fails. 

Weibo, finally, stakes everything on its forcible acquisition of Bitcoin, but the global energy crisis caused by the 37th hurricane of the Atlantic hurricane season in November 2018 blocks Bitcoin from the world’s grid. Bitcoin’s ensuing bankruptcy drags down the Chinese social media behemoth.

In the new world slowly emerging by the end of 2018, people begin to read long 18th-century English novels, go to the symphony, and watch 12 to 14 hours of terrestrial television a day. They also play board games as a family. Columnists for the nation’s “little magazines” reconsider the typewriter, and tell us about it at length. Newspapers begin to regain advertising market share. And, slowly but surely, people begin to know less and less about how many times Donald Trump has golfed, the most recent campus free-speech controversy, and North Korea’s latest missile launch. Everyone grows a little bit more ignorant, but also a lot more relaxed. It’s unclear whether to count 2018’s great social media die-off as a triumph, or a tragedy — or both. Pundits point to the looming 2020 American election as the moment when we’ll finally figure it out.

C.W. Anderson is a professor of media and communication at the University of Leeds.

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David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

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Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

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Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

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C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

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Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

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Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

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Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

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Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

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Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Julia B. Chan   Looking for loyalty in all the right places

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Paul Ford   Go global

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

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Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

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Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

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Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

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Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

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Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

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Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

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