Picture for a second a world without social media likes and follower counts. Would you still use social media? I think very few people would. What made the social media phenomenon so successful had less to do with the social part of it and more to do with the need that we have to be liked and accepted. Is a utopian world without likes and follower counts on social media possible? Some think it is.
Platforms like Facebook or Instagram play with our self-esteem and hook us by making us think that the more likes or people following us that we have, the better we are. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, women’s magazines have been doing it for ages making women feel bad about themselves and their bodies to hook them into buying the products from their advertisers.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently told an audience that the "follower count" on the social platforms is meaningless and that, back in the day, when they were still developing the tool, they were not really thinking about it as an important feature. Little did they know that it would become the most important feature for users, advertisers and anyone profiting from social media in general. These days, however, Twitter is considering discontinuing the “likes” feature.
How would a post-likes, post-follower-count world look like? Would social media platforms be relevant anymore? Maybe this would be the biggest digital revolution since social media itself. People sharing ideas and having meaningful connections without the popularity contest that these platforms have turned into. A real social platform.
Could this even be possible? How would you feel if you weren’t able to tell if anyone watched or liked your posts or stories? How would the so-called influencers make a living? Maybe it would be a more democratic and less noisy social media environment, where the algorithms of these platforms wouldn’t be able to favour the posts of those users with more likes and followers, or where the motivation to write a post would be to share knowledge rather than to clickbait people for traffic and conversion.
Maybe I’m just being too naive and someone would find a way to keep on profiting from our vanity and egos. Whoever figures it out and finds a way to monetize it will be ahead of the game. Is anyone up for the challenge?
Photo credit: photo by Ruby Rose.
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