(originally posted here)

Adam Sudewo: In Sad by Design (2019), you argue that sadness on social media is not accidental but deliberately designed. Can you elaborate on how sadness is embedded in platform design?

Geert Lovink: Like always, with the emergence of a strong concept such as ‘sad by design, ‘ sources appeared fist, around the mid-2010s, when ‘platform capitalism’ established itself. The lock-in effort started to kick in. In the essay, I am mapping the references, from the ‘Sad Girl’ phenomena, Melissa Broder’s work, to the Facebook whistleblowers. Sadness and neighbouring mental states are responses to the relentless attack on the attention span of users, craving for likes and followers. The short moments of sadness pop up when it all becomes too much, and the propped-up Self collapses. You sense a mini-depression, a brief dip in which you feel low. But then a new message rolled in, yet another crisis. There is no break. The 24/7 distraction is in full swing. There’s no clue how to stop swiping. None of them leads to anything. There are always more videos to watch, fake news to follow, and messages to read and respond to. You try to keep up but fail.

AS: In the book, you describe social media as an ideology. How does this ideology manifest in our daily digital lives?

GL: Marxism was already in crisis mode when I studied political science at the University of Amsterdam in the late 1970s. A valid exception was the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, whose claim to fame was that ideology is not propaganda or fake news but something one naturally accepts and does not think about or notice, like the air we breathe. Ideology dwells inside us. The same can be said of the dominant social media platforms. No one even remembers the moment they arrived. Overnight, they immediately became self-evident. No one had to be convinced or even instructed how to use them. This is also how religion used to work. You were born into it. There is no choice. It’s called post-market capitalism. Only inside the platform is there a choice: what to buy (Amazon), who to like (Facebook), and who to follow (X). A glimpse into a random café, bus or living room will show you that everyone’s on their phone. We feel sorry for the ones staring outside. What’s wrong with them? Don’t they have friends, lovers, or a favourite sports club?

AS: You mention that the internet has shifted from an experimental phase to stagnation. What do you think caused this, and is there a way out?

GL: The transition period from Web 2.0 to platform monopolies is the same for those older than GenZ: between 2008 and 2014. First, there were websites, lists, and forums, followed by blogs and social networking sites such as Friendster, Hyves, LiveJournal, Orkut, etc. And then, suddenly, there was only Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This is, of course, related to the rise of smartphones and its limited app economy. Most people only use three or four apps on their phone. There is no need to back this up with statistics. It’s all too obvious and just part of the collective amnesia that we have somehow forgotten how we got here. The way out will likely be nasty geopolitics leading up to wars, environmental catastrophes, and the next pandemic — drastic changes. The word ‘shock therapy’ à la Naomi Klein will likely be too mild. Not funny.

AS: Do you believe that social media can still be a tool for meaningful communication, or has it become an instrument of platform capitalism?

GL: Social media as a concept is dead. Overused, emptied of meaning, associated with bad vibes. Mission accomplished? Over the past 15 years, I have tried to explain what’s wrong with this term. The ‘social media question’ will be resolved in a similar way as the 19th century ‘social question’ was once ‘resolved’ through war, revolutions, genocide, mass migration, coup d’etats and other reactionary crackdowns. Class struggles were neutralized through welfare solutions. I doubt if a next destruction phase will ultimately lead to a compromise of ‘media welfare’. Will the forces for a digital public infrastructure be strong enough to enforce, build up, and maintain it? At this moment in time, the movement is fragmented and tiny.

AS: Some social media critiques focus on user behaviour, while others blame structural issues. Where do you place the primary responsibility for change — on individuals, corporations, or larger economic systems?

GL: Initial response: blame me, my generation, the so-called ‘internet pioneers’ that failed to defend and build up the internet as a vibrant public infrastructure. We cannot accuse the following millennial dotcom start-up generation as they were fully implicated from the day they got onto the Net. We know the answer is not more entrepreneurs. If only. Another possible answer: are open-source and free software geeks guilty? In part, they still work for Silicon Valley, but their scene is split, without many of them wanting to address this rift publicly. Next. Are the makers of alternatives responsible because they do not know how to scale up fast? It’s a neo-liberal idea to blame individual users for their ‘consumer behaviour’. I never believed in that trajectory. Instead, it could be more interesting to experiment with the theory of tipping points. How do social movements emerge these days? Look around you. In Europe, we’re in the midst of a massive wave of protests: In the last weeks, there have been large demonstrations in Istanbul, Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade and Athens. What was the role of social media in these uprisings? To appeal to Silicon Valley in this respect would be naïve. Instead of considering them as an agent of change once again, they should move out, crumble, and be socialized into public infrastructure (not nationalized; there is no role for the state here). Run our communication channels like non-profits, as if they were public libraries, coops. Critical discourse, organization and knowledge are simply too important to hand over to oligarchs.

AS: You compare social media to gambling in terms of its addictive design. Is there an ethical way to redesign these platforms, or should we abandon them entirely?

GL: Let me first address your ‘addiction’ question. It is entirely possible to design information and communication systems that are functional, neutral and rational. Look at texting and email. There is nothing human or emotional about it. The issue starts to become different once I have convinced you to use my app or service and want to ‘sell’ you their IT for free in exchange for your data and ad ‘engagement’. The lack of a neutral and rational subscription system is one of the main reasons the internet and telecoms are sorry. In an ideal world, there are no centralized platforms, and all are dealt with via protocols. But this is not how ‘cyberspace’ evolved — mainly thanks to the world view of right-wing venture capitalists that have ruled over Silicon Valley since the early 1990s.

I don’t want to talk about ‘ethics’ as this term has been so compromised lately in AI. Looking into recent history, the most likely road to change is exodus, abandoning existing platforms and migrating elsewhere together. Corporations like Meta and Google, Microsoft and Amazon will never allow ‘IT commissars’ to move in and take over. How do you imagine this? Deleting a few files and changing passwords can make these systems unusable in seconds. The DOGE tactic is an interesting test case in this respect. Would you imagine revolutionary DOGE squats moving into Instagram and deleting APIs, algorithms, profiles and the advertisement eco-system? How could gain such an extraordinary executive power? Remember, Musk’s army is hacking into government databases, not some corporate ones. Their strategy is hit-and-run abstract violence, driven by criminal energy and cunning tactics, backed up by the president, for now. There is no way to change platforms through legislation, as judges do not have a hacker army to enforce their will. In this age of cybersecurity, why don’t they?

AS: In Sad by Design, you introduce the ‘minimal selfie’ concept. How has taking selfies evolved from self-expression to a form of social control?

GL: If only it had ‘evolved’… you are a bit optimistic here, I fear. We’re trapped. How many of us really understand the implications of facial recognition software? And what’s the role of new power machine learning infrastructure in this respect? At the time when we worked on selfie theory, around 2012–2016, we connected this, on the one hand to the constitution of a personal data file with thousands of elements that together consist the ‘online self’ (see Vladan Joler’s work, but also Eva Illouz and Shoshana Zuboff) and to the narrow definition of a selfie as an ID photo that is used by (state) authorities to identify persons, for instance in a crowd, during demonstrations and riots. Both of them are repressive and will be used against you. There is no trade-off here. No citizens (also known as ‘users’) benefit from all this data gathering.

AS: How do social media contribute to the acceleration of individual atomization and the erosion of collective solidarity?

GL: In my next chronicle of critical net culture, Platform Brutality, I include an essay on the role of social media in the rapid rise of loneliness. This is a hard topic for me to write about. Luckily, a range of solid sociological studies are available on the subject. I am influenced by Arendt, Riesman, and Hertz. I have taken the ‘narrow’ internet approach by asking the all too obvious but hard-to-answer question of how loneliness accelerates when one is in constant ‘contact’ with many via social media. This is the media/tech variation of Riesman’s 1950s study, The Lonely Crowd. In 1983, I was the last generation to graduate in ‘mass psychology’, and ever since my involvement with the internet, I have been struggling to continue this ‘traumatic’ 20th-century science. It is a struggle between the two giants that settled down inside me: Canetti’s crowd and power waging an epic battle with Baudrillard’s dissolvement of the masses into a ‘silent majority’. In the same era we saw the rise of neo-liberalism and the cult of the self.

AS: You write that ‘truth is what makes us sad.’ Do you think digital nihilism is a reaction to increased awareness of platform exploitation or just an effect of digital distraction?

GL: The first. We’d love to be glamorous, yet feel cringe instead. While our image is incredible, the inside is empty. The nihilism is not some grand narrative or belief system; it literally means zero here. Sloterdijk’s cynical reason may come closer. Even better would be Zizek’s false consciousness: we know the intimate details of the platform logic but are unwilling and unable to do anything against it. Enlightenment runs empty here. As long as the façade holds, the business-as-usual reasoning prevails. As long as there are no interruptions, the system continues to run. Digital nihilism can only come to a halt because of a serious rupture. If it remains an event or spectacle, the platform will continue smoothly synthesizing the flows.

AS: Do younger generations experience ‘digital sadness’ differently from older generations? If so, how?

GL: You’re the first to ask this question. Older generations have not experienced the degree of digital sadness compared to others due to their initial lack of emotional commitment. Their media consumption was more diverse, bound by ‘old media’. The sceptical distance is more significant. It is not up to me to judge if this is a good or a bad thing. Their judgement of social media is certainly not accurate, let alone true. Over the past few years, particularly during the Covid period, their involvement has grown (think about WhatsApp and their ‘takeover’ of Facebook after most youngsters had moved to Insta and later to TikTok). Their criticism has often been moralistic, expressing blunt forms of offline romanticism as the only legitimate way out. Boomers do not get the influencer logic, either. Their mental household is formatted differently; for instance, by reducing social media involvement to ‘screentime’.

AS: Your book discusses how social media reinforces invisible hierarchies. How can users become aware of and resist these hierarchies?

GL: I am not a fan of more awareness. Change no longer works like that. There’s enough awareness and related feelings of anger, guilt and anxiety. Enough of that. Hierarchies should be addressed head-on in the ‘real world’, collectively, no matter how difficult this may seem. Racism, for instance, will not be resolved at the level of representation. We should turn the following order on a fundamental level. Inequality and repression are not PR problems. Media makers will have to take a step here and instead assist in turning the focus on organization and dissent. Forget digital correctness and identity policing. These have been a trap. Virtuality follows reality, not the other way round, no matter how vast and persuasive the empire of images might be.

AS: You describe the decline of radical digital activism and the rise of ‘clicktivism.’ What strategies do you see for reclaiming digital spaces for real activism?

GL: Reclaiming the internet will mean going back to its roots. It implies an bexodus, forgetting about the data-driven nonsense and the sheer self-importance of influencers, celebrities and the related marketing industries that operate on their backs. Real activism is not a term I would use. Instead, I emphasize the importance of self-organization, space for discussion and strategy, and the freedom to steer ICT toward simple, valuable tools. Stop connecting everything to everything, as this only makes us more vulnerable to attacks and (self)censorship. Digital spaces, even the safe ones, will not protect us. And do not expect to be rewarded for standing up and saying no.

AS: Many social movements rely on social media for mobilization. How can they use these platforms effectively without becoming trapped in the logic of platform capitalism?

GL: You can’t. Do whatever you want, but my advice is: don’t. Please wake up and build parallel communication channels. Why make it so easy for the powers that be? Marc Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are not your friends and will ultimately turn you in. After Trump’s re-election, the discussion is over. Sorry.

AS: You argue that we live in a ‘society of the social,’ with no social life outside social media. How can we imagine new forms of social interaction beyond platform logic?

GL: No doubt, I strongly believe in the collective imagination to create new forms of the social. Bring the administrated life to an end and rage against the machine. Ever since the early 1980s, I have been influenced by the Italian autonomist movement and the particular notions they still have about society’s primal, subversive energy. I initially encountered these ideas through a West German reading of it, but that was fine with me. The assumption is that the social is not an after-effect of material or economic processes but predates it. Workers do not merely respond to moves from the side of the capital. Social movements exist in earlier scenes, cores of small groups, sites of resistance and, yes, autonomy. They can and will be crushed, but they can also survive, regroup and stand up again. This is a form of resilience one rarely finds online. It’s just so much more challenging. I am not holy and not a member of the Church of the Real. Reality is becoming a luxury commodity. Virtual friendships are vital these days. And so are new forms of the para-real. But all of them, if done properly, only thrive outside of the platform logic. Extractivism and surveillance ultimately kill all forms of online social relationships.

AS: What role do governments and regulations play in shaping the future of social media? Do you see regulation as a potential solution, or is it just another form of control?

GL: Internet is a child of the right-wing-populist era that coincided with neo-liberalist rule. Except for China, Iran and Russia, there has never been a serious effort to regulate the internet. Instead, there was this naïve idea that ‘governance’ was a task of the industry itself. This is why monopolies established themselves so quickly (control of secret services was exempted). The regulation you point at might be the EU one. The issue there is a lack of enforcement. They can only punish but not force reform. They will not be able to break open platforms. The problem is also that regulation is so slow that they will always, by definition, work on dead issues. Time is an imminent problem all internet research also struggles with. With an average length of 4–5 years, each profound PhD trajectory is condemned to write history instead of creating workable ‘solutions’. Who’s interested in GDPR enforcement in 2025? The Digital Markets Act has a similar naïve idea about ‘competition’ in a landscape without European alternatives.

AS: You introduced the concept of the ‘avant-garde of the commons’ as an alternative to platform capitalism. How do you envision this working in practice?

GL: The idea of digital commons is a clear alternative to the lack of serious competition. Instead of expecting ancient French or German IT firms to create viable options for Meta and Google, we’ve strongly believed in the power of public digital infrastructures owned neither by the state nor the corporations. These experiments have been running like this for 40–50 years. It is no mystery. Look at all the work that Trebor Scholz and his scene have been doing in platform cooperativism (https://platform.coop/). The issue to discuss might be how to scale up. Is this also possible outside of cloud capitalism? Signal can be an interesting case to follow in this respect. There is some doubt, including Telegram, because of Russian ties and its current location in Dubai. Should we even discuss Chinese services such as TikTok, WeChat and Xiaohongshu? The violence and repression inflicted by the CCP on its internet dissidents is relentless. For me, this is not the way to go.

AS: Are there any existing digital projects or platforms that you believe successfully challenge dominant social media models?

GL: When INC kicked off the Unlike Us network in 2011, this was our desire, our demand. 14 years later, a lot of progress has been made. It just took forever. We apologize for the lost decade. These days, we no longer have to promote individual applications such as Signal, the Fediverse, Cryptpad.fr, or OpenOffice but present an entire list. You pick and choose. Where do you want to start today?

AS: With society’s increasing digitalization, do you see a future where analog forms of communication and community-making become more important again?

GL: The renaissance of all things analogue moves me, no doubt. It is a gentle reminder of the late 1980s and 90s creative explosion when analogue, digital, real and virtual, online and offline, were mixed in the backdrop of post-industrial ruins. Not voluntarily but because it was the tech state of affairs. To cross-pollinate and ‘pollute’ radically different data streams is a classic artistic strategy. However, this should be done to question and undermine power, disrupting and questioning normality, not bringing salvation or glorifying oligarchs.

AS: Do you think social media will decline in relevance, or will it become even more dominant in shaping our everyday lives?

GL: ‘Social media’ is a particular beast. It is an odd mixture of personal stuff and news aimed to keep you scrolling and swiping. The architecture is designed for distracted people who can quickly like, follow, and comment on the move. All this can be created in radically different ways. The alternatives I discussed above are more or less open source with an emphasis on privacy but not fundamentally different. Instead, let’s start with a rigid separation of personal communication, general information and payment/delivery systems. The fact that these layers are becoming so intertwined makes these apps so irresistible and toxic. Farewell to the One Click One Stop Shop. To break the platform hegemony and create a critical mass for alternatives, we need to go (back) to the drawing board. This is fun and can be damned easy. Let’s first of all experiment. Start small and build seductive communication gems. Breaking the monopolies is challenging, mainly because of the habits they create inside us. The question is a deeply ‘accelerationist’ one: is implosion and collapse ultimately the only option left? As you can see, I do not believe in regulation and reform. These proposals have been dead for a good decade.

AS: If you could give one practical piece of advice to individuals who want to reduce the negative impact of social media in their lives, what would it be?

GL: It’s not all that hard. Turn your phone into a tool. Make it work for you. Start to organize, call onto others, nearby and afar, to come together and conspire. Create a name and a logo, and start with memes to attract the attention of like-minded Others out there. It’s useless to begin with the deletion of social media accounts. Life is not a punishment. Don’t act like a Calvinist. I do not believe in offline misery. At first, it might feel like liberation, but social isolation is the worst. First, build and join groups around, then introduce discord. I hate the salvation aspect of the word ‘community’. We do not need a false unity but discussion and dialogue. Fire, not frost. Only out of a range of choices, tactics, and later strategies will emerge. Have fun, and believe in the power of irony and wit. Do not suppress the madness and desire. Enact what the authoritarian forces in charge despise.