Still from The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Of all the texts we read at in the Hyperlinked Communities module, boyd’s (2016) “What World Are We Building?” resonated most with me. As someone who has grew up as a member of — and later helped to build — a number of rich and socially rewarding internet communities throughout the ’90s and ’00s, the shifts she describes are depressingly familiar. Over the past decade or so I’ve watched many of the online spaces that previously felt more like home than any of my physical homes did get bulldozed and replaced by hideous walled-garden panopticons. Social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram that seemed fun at first but mostly served to accelerate capitalism (Ranger, 2020), extract data, exploit minors, (FTC, 2024), enable grifting (Mishan, 2019), foster hatred (Bond, 2021), confuse our perception of time (Posner, 2018), further marginalize marginalized communities (boyd, 2011), spread misinformation, cultivate tribalism, and empower fascists (Cook, 2017).

Ranger (2020) calls for “a socialist digital deceleration” via a move towards “independent/ethical/decentralized alternative digital products” and I’m inclined to agree. It’s time to divest from big tech as much as possible and refocus our collective energies towards building new networks for entertainment and information distribution, ones that are smaller but still more inclusive, that actively strive to bridge the widening gap between physical and digital communities and between old media and new.

Fortunately, public libraries are uniquely positioned to spearhead such efforts! In many communities they stand as the most prevalent (if not the only) non-commercial in-real-life third space available to the general public and already have infrastructure and built-in audiences. Library makerspaces like Memphis Library’s Cloud 901 Lab (Memphis Library, n.d.) stand as strong examples of technological curiosity being applied to purely creative, closed-circuit and communal ends while the many digital services and events that libraries offered during the COVID-19 pandemic (Syn, et al., 2023) proved that the patron base is savvy enough to adapt to online environments. Maybe librarians could consider further merging these two approaches into something more concrete and socially-focused?

Personally, I’ve mostly moved away from posting on platforms like Twitter and Instagram and towards having smaller, more anonymous, less permanent chats on Discord servers, running conversations that are technically open-to-the-public (via word-of-mouth invites, mostly) but not publicly-indexed as such. Discord is a VC-funded company and will likely be ruined eventually for that reason but I do think it is a good model for quieter, less extractive forms of online socialization. It is quite easy to imagine an open-source/decentralized/not-for-profit version, perhaps one that is specifically designed with libraries and library patrons in mind. We already think of physical libraries as sources of quietude in an otherwise loud world, maybe one day their online outposts could offer similar relief from the blaring noise of the social internet.

References:

Bond, K. (2021, April 30). Why do we ‘hate-follow’ people on social media? The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-psychology-behind-why-we-hatefollow-people-on-social-media-b1837751.html

boyd, d. (2016, January 25). What world are we building? Medium. https://medium.com/datasociety-points/what-world-are-we-building-9978495dd9ad

boyd, d. (2011). White flight in networked publics? How race and class shaped American teen engagement with MySpace and Facebook. In Nakamura, L. & Chow-White, P. A. (Eds.) Race After the Internet (pp. 203-222) Routledge. https://www.danah.org/papers/2011/WhiteFlight.pdf

Cook, R. F. (2017). From triumph of the will to twitter: Modern media and the evolution of tribalism. Colloquia Germanica, 50(3/4), 315–326. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26852199

Federal Trade Commission (2024, September 19). FTC staff report finds large social media and video streaming companies have engaged in vast surveillance of users with lax privacy controls and inadequate safeguards for kids and teens. [Press Release]. Federal Trade Commission. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-staff-report-finds-large-social-media-video-streaming-companies-have-engaged-vast-surveillance

Goldstein, M. & Bensimon, O. (2025, February 24). Crypto firm pleads guilty to operating illegally in U.S. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/business/okx-crypto-exchange-guilty-plea.html

Kaplan, M. (2020, September 21). How libraries are writing a new chapter during the pandemic. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/libraries-respond-to-coronavirus-with-book-bikes-and-virtual-festivals

Memphis Library. (n.d.). Cloud901 Teen Learning Lab. Memphis Library. https://www.memphislibrary.org/cloud901/

Mishan, L. (2019, September 12). The distinctly American ethos of the grifter. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/t-magazine/the-distinctly-american-ethos-of-the-grifter.html

Posner, L. (2018, January 25). Social media may be messing with your perception of time. Salon. https://www.salon.com/2018/01/25/social-media-may-be-messing-with-your-perception-of-time_partner/

Ranger, J. (2020). Slow down! Digital deceleration towards A socialist social media. TripleC, 18(1), 254–267. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v18i1.1127

Syn, S. Y., Sinn, D., & Kim, S. (2023). Innovative public library services during the COVID-19 pandemic: Application and revision of social innovation typology. Library & Information Science Research, 45(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2023.101248

Thompson, P. (2024, March 28). Palmer Luckey says Anduril is working on AI weapons that ‘give us the ability to swiftly win any war’. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/palmer-luckey-anduril-defense-startup-ai-weapons-war-2024-3