What if the future of social media isn’t a few giant platforms to rule them all, but a mosaic of connected online community spaces, each space with its own norms, scale, and purpose? That’s the central question Josh Kramer and the team at New_ Public keep asking. New_ Public is a nonprofit R&D lab reimagining social media: designing digital public spaces that connect people, embrace pluralism, and build community.
Josh’s piece at The Elysian illustrates this vividly: a photographer in Japan uses AI to build a warm social space for his fans in a matter of hours. Canadians crowdfund a sovereign platform using federated protocols that still connects to the wider world. The tools are here. The movement is real. This feels like a genuine revival of what social media could be.… Read more...
