Yesterday while I was writing about rewriting the web, I kind of glossed-over (online) social networks because I thought they did more harm than good. I qualified this by referring specifically to websites with no purpose other than socializing. I gave that more thought overnight and I'd like to explore it a bit further because I think there's some good that can come of it.
I often draw an analogy between Facebook and "the bar nobody likes but everyone can agree on". This is more of an explanation as to why anybody continues to use Facebook, but the bar analogy is interesting in the context of places of social intercourse and purpose.
Note: Feel free to substitute "bar" with coffeeshop, bowling alley, shopping mall or any other physical location where people meet that has a purpose other than being only a place for people to meet.
Where the bar analogy falls-down as a comparison to Facebook is that a bar has a purpose: to sell hooch. People congregate, meet, become friends, start fights, share experiences and all sorts of other things at the bar, but the bar would cease to exist if it wasn't able to make money selling drinks.
Having a purpose also constrains who you might be socializing with. People in any bar are either: people who like alcoholic drinks or people who are friends with people who like alcoholic drinks. In many cases the filtering is even more specific, selecting for a specific range of drinks (beers vs. cocktails), activities (watching sports, playing pool, etc.) and atmosphere. This "pre-selection" process matters as it increases the potential for compatibility between patrons as well as reducing the chances of conflict.
I think this purpose is critical, and explains why such online meeting places become toxic when they have no obvious and visible purpose.
Don't get me wrong, I know Facebook has a purpose in this sense, one that pays the bills, but it's never been honest and up-front about this purpose because if it had, nobody would have ever walked through the front door. Facebook's purpose is to spy on the people who go there, and it stays in business by selling the information about you that it secretly gathers. Would you go to a bar if there was a sign on the door that said:
"Drinks are free so long as you give us permission to sell everything about you and your friends to people who want to take everything you have, your mind, body, soul and treasure, many of which want to imprison or kill you"
I wouldn't, and I don't think most people would.
But that's Facebook's purpose, and how Facebook pays the bills. The same is essentially true for all websites whose only purpose is to be a "social network", it appears to be the best way to cover the costs of running a singular planet-scale site.
Contrast this to websites that serve a more obvious purpose in addition to being a place to hang-out. Special-interest forums, for example, can become "spicy" but general the conflicts tend to self-correct when everyone involved remembers why they are there in the first place (a common interest). These conflicts are at times severe, and occasionally do fracture personal relationships but as far as I know they have never led to the installation of fascist dictators or the fall of democracy.
At least not yet.
All this is to say that I don't think online spaces for socialization are harmful or worthless. I myself have benefited greatly from such spaces, but when I reflect on something close to four decades of interacting with people in cyberspace the good ones have always been places that had a purpose other than simple congregating people for not other reason than congregating them, and the absolute best have been where we were working together on something to benefit the common good.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026