danah boyd: "When practitioners used the term 'social media' to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protocols that allowed people to socialize with friends and communities of interest by using digital technologies. Twenty years later, users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated. In this essay, I argue that the very essence of social media has changed. To more effectively interrogate what we are witnessing, we need to stop presuming that these tools are 'social media' and begin recognizing that they are now 'parasocial media.'"
[...]
"The practices that define social media in 2026 look extraordinarily different than the practices we were trying to document 20 years earlier. The 'social' in 'social media' has slowly become a misnomer. In 2006, most people who logged into the large platforms posted content because they were co-constructing sociable spaces to enjoy the companionship of others. In 2026, posting has waned (John, 2024); most social media users prioritize scrolling 'amateur' content rather than posting their own haphazard updates for friends. The quality of the media on social media has become more strategically constructed, more intentionally curated, and more professional. Users are now lucky to see personal content that their friends are posting amid the slick content created by the advertisers and strategic creators who dominate most people’s feeds. What goes 'viral' is now often manufactured in a lab, designed to appeal (Hund, 2023; Mears, 2023). "
[...]
"The major US social media platforms were always run by corporations, but the pursuit of financialized economic growth to appease investors led companies to contort their platforms away from sociality (Srnicek, 2019). Socializing among friends is not nearly as profitable as convincing users to consume more and more polished media. Sociality is not as assetizable"