[HN Gopher] My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions
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My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions
https://www.timothychambers.net/2024/12/24/predictions-for-t...
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 68 points
Date : 2025-12-24 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.timothychambers.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.timothychambers.net)
| nunobrito wrote:
| The article is OK albeit unaware of what is happening on the
| NOSTR world so I'll take the liberty of making some predictions
| related to NOSTR:
|
| 1) Blossom grows even more and defacto replaces IPFS for
| decentralized file distribution
|
| 2) Open Social goes beyond text and decentralized video, docs,
| meetings, calendars become easily available with several
| implementations sharing a common NOSTR protocol underneath for
| accounts and communication, see https://iris.to/ as first example
|
| 3) True P2P social web is achieved. Forget about servers or
| clouds, each cellphone becomes its own data center and cellphones
| talk with other using P2P techniques
| evbogue wrote:
| What strategy will Nostr use to achieve true P2P social?
| nunobrito wrote:
| From what I see, WebRTC is the key to achieve direct P2P
| connections.
|
| I'm involved at NOSTR project where beyond internet the
| connections can be made with bluetooth, LoRa, LAN (including
| Wi-Fi) and radio using walkie-talkies.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| > Bluesky will cross 60 million registered users in 2026. Growth
| will slow from 2024's explosive pace but remain steady, driven by
| continued X dissatisfaction and improved features.
|
| That would be a surprise since (active user) growth has been
| negative over recent months.
| j45 wrote:
| Steady might be just fine if a higher majority of those users
| are writers and publishers and not just consumers.
| chrneu wrote:
| As far as I can tell, bluesky is pretty much on the way out.
| Nobody really uses it like they did twitter. it doesn't have
| the same vibe. it just feels forced. the science community
| might save it as a kind of summarizing service.
|
| i think this might be a problem with many of the "replacement"
| services. That initial growth and boom was driven by the
| novelty and curiosity of the service. Now that twitter is seen
| as kind of played out it feels unnecessary to be on a clone of
| it. The draw is gone and most of the utility(alerts) have moved
| elsewhere.
|
| i tried using bluesky and it just felt...lame? It wasn't really
| bluesky, just the fact I was on yet another social media
| service. A significant amount of folks on there are only on
| there because it isn't twitter. then they realize they don't
| need twitter which means they dont need bluesky.
|
| bluesky feels like a bunch of high school kids who didnt get
| invites to the real prom so they made a different prom, but the
| different prom kinda sucks. "Yay, prom!" "Um..this isn't prom,
| this is different prom."
| AJ007 wrote:
| Mastodon has been better than I expected after the first
| Twitter exodus slowed down. Much less noise than X/Twitter.
| The protocol may turn out not to be scalable, but it's very
| much alive.
| observationist wrote:
| It's like a compromise between forums and twitter, and
| there are some great smaller communities out there. When
| the curation and moderation are good, and the community has
| a solid purpose, you get gems - quite a few mastodon gems
| out there.
| akho wrote:
| At this point, it isn't clear why federation is in there
| at all. The "forums, bit twitter" concept does produce
| nice places, but federation seems like a net negative for
| that.
| owisd wrote:
| The steelman for federation is that email survived the
| rise of the big platforms despite no-one owning email, so
| making other applications follow the email model means
| they too could be free from central ownership.
| riffraff wrote:
| Federation is good if you want to stay within a community
| but also have a chance to interact with others.
|
| I.e. you mostly care about technology foo but occasion
| delve into epic poetry, and it's nice to interact with
| both footech.social and epicpoems.read. Also, being able
| to consume personal publishing (blogs!) from within the
| same app is quite nice.
| observationist wrote:
| Some of the worst of the pile-on, scolding, pearl clutching
| behaviors that made everyone very glad to see certain people
| leave other platforms make large swathes of bsky totally
| worthless. It's like a mashup of the worst parts of reddit
| and twitter.
|
| There are a couple nooks and crannies that are worthwhile,
| but at scale it's not a good place. The vibe is "something
| went wrong" and "poor decisions have led me here" and not
| "warm, welcoming, vibrant, innovative community of wonderful
| people."
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > As far as I can tell, bluesky is pretty much on the way
| out.
|
| Maybe in your niche, but it's absolutely filled with lots of
| great people, and the posts are on topic and fun to read.
| Perhaps the issue isn't Bluesky, but you. There are still
| great posts there, but if you weren't reading that stuff to
| begin with, maybe this is a good thing that you aren't using
| it anymore.
| ctoth wrote:
| > There are still great posts there, but if you weren't
| reading that stuff to begin with, maybe this is a good
| thing that you aren't using it anymore.
|
| There's something beautiful about a defense of a community
| that is also a perfect exemplar of that community. Bit
| fractal, init?
| p2detar wrote:
| I personally find it less toxic than Xitter and that's
| good. Less drama, lots of politics - which is probably
| normal at the moment but kind of annoying. Certain
| bubbles like gamedev are big. I think bsky is here to
| stay.
| jollymonATX wrote:
| Spot on observation. The very class of interaction
| indeed.
| romellem wrote:
| The experience you describe has been completely different
| from mine. I'm not a big poster, but I use Bluesky daily for:
|
| - Sports
|
| - Law
|
| - Authors
|
| - Comedy
|
| - Video Games
|
| - Programming news
|
| - Other general news
|
| Really feels like you are projecting a bit.
| cebert wrote:
| What's unfortunate to me is both Bluesky and X have become
| dominated by political posts. I don't have any interest in that
| and just want to keep up with interesting tech updates.
| dutchCourage wrote:
| I use Bluesky to keep up with software development news. The
| ability to default to my "following" feed is a big plus. I
| mostly see software related stuff and the stream of posts is
| slow enough that I reduced my time spent on the app.
| rapnie wrote:
| Launching in early 2026, Eurosky Social [0] is coming.
|
| > The next era of social media: built and run in Europe, ruled
| by our laws.
|
| > Eurosky is building a European alternative to Big Tech social
| media and web services that is focused on innovation, user
| choice and open standards. Eurosky develops foundational
| software and services that enable entrepreneurs and startups to
| launch their products faster, cheaper and ready to scale.
|
| [0] https://www.eurosky.social
| emaro wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Seems like they want to be a European
| identity (and maybe more) provider for the AT protocol.
|
| > We're launching @eurosky.social, a European identity that
| works across the entire open social web. Get access to any
| app built in the AT Protocol, including Bluesky, Flashes,
| Tangled, and many more. Hosted in Europe, governed in Europe.
| [Launching January 2026]
|
| I applaud the effort, but participating in the Fediverse I
| take issue with the fact that they seem to equal AT with "the
| entire open web". That's just BS if true.
| rapnie wrote:
| Looks like they are ready to scoop up a bunch of EU grant
| money, perhaps at fediverse's cost. Esp. since it looks
| (not sure) that an AI company is behind the initiative:
| https://themodalfoundation.org/
| jimmydoe wrote:
| social network, and to some degree open internet, is a millennial
| thing, it will die out as millennials get older.
| fogzen wrote:
| I tend to agree -- but is there any data on this?
| culi wrote:
| A poll of gen alpha (aged 12-15) from 2024 asked about job
| aspirations: YouTuber (32%) TikTok
| creator (21%) Doctor/nurse (20%) Mobile app/video
| game developer (19%) Entrepreneur (17%) Artist
| (16%) Sports athlete (15%) Professional online
| streamer (15%) Musician (14%) Teacher (14%)
| senorrib wrote:
| I'd argue those aren't really because of the social aspects
| of Youtube or TikTok.
| flipbrad wrote:
| Something so grim should be accompanied by its citation, just
| so we can check it's not a windup
| xnorswap wrote:
| two decades ago it would have been: 1.
| Movie Star / Actor 2. TV Star / entertainer
|
| Youtube / tiktok are just the equivalent for that age in
| this day & age.
| culi wrote:
| This is probably true and I would be really interested to
| see a longer-running study with a consistent methodology
| taking this on
| ctoth wrote:
| Consider a prompt like this to a Deep Research agent if
| you are interested:
|
| How have youth career aspirations toward
| entertainment/fame-oriented careers changed over time
| (1960s-present), and does the rise of "influencer"
| represent a genuine shift or category substitution?
|
| \"Specific sub-questions\":
|
| 1. What longitudinal or repeated cross-sectional surveys
| have asked children/teens about career aspirations with
| consistent methodology?
|
| 2. What were the historical rates for
| "actor/entertainer/movie star" type responses in surveys
| from 1970-2000?
|
| 3. How do current "influencer/YouTuber" rates compare
| when aggregated with traditional entertainment
| categories?
|
| 4. Are there international comparison studies showing
| different rates by country?
|
| 5. Is there evidence for changing _perceived
| accessibility_ of fame careers (kids thinking it 's
| actually achievable vs. fantasy)?
|
| \"Priority sources\": Academic journals (Journal of
| Career Development, Journal of Vocational Behavior),
| Gallup historical archives, Pew Research, YouGov
| archives, OECD education reports, Harris polls historical
| data.
|
| \"Methodological notes\": Flag when studies use different
| age ranges, different question framings (open-ended vs.
| multiple choice), and whether "entertainment" categories
| were offered or emerged organically.
|
| I ran this for you and got some really interesting
| results[0] (TLDR: Young people have traded the stability
| of the "Company Man" for the autonomy of the "Personal
| Brand" in response to a labor market that no longer
| guarantees security.
|
| [0]: https://gemini.google.com/share/3652b7910d8b
| Zetaphor wrote:
| One interesting difference is influencer is plausible for
| a significantly larger population of youth than their
| legacy equivalents ever were
| culi wrote:
| I didn't wanna cite the Fortune article I got it from
| because it cited research from a group called "Whop" that
| didn't have the full data available. But here's the article
| I read
|
| https://fortune.com/article/gen-alpha-dream-careers-
| youtuber...
|
| EDIT: now that I'm looking more into it, I think this
| YouGov poll was the original source https://today.yougov.co
| m/technology/articles/39997-influence...
|
| I do vaguely recall a more serious study showing a vast
| majority of kids thinking "influencer" was a viable career
| path and a very large portion beleiving it was the _only_
| viable career path for them. It also found that these
| percentages were higher in boys than in girls. That 's the
| study I was trying to find but failed and found this
| instead
| ronbenton wrote:
| Anecdata--as one of the oldest millennials, I have seen a very
| steep drop off in social network usage amongst my peers. Too
| much IRL family stuff.
| jollymonATX wrote:
| We are a major sized user cohort and using social platforms
| is just not worth the energy is my feeping also. Granted not
| family tradeoff in ky case, just I don't have free time to
| waste.
| chipheat wrote:
| Why? At least currently I don't feel this way about them.
| riffic wrote:
| A "social network" is a concept that goes far beyond computing
| and the _internet_
| antonkar wrote:
| X or Bsky will likely evolve/become replaced by the social
| network where every tweet is an instant poll, here's a mockup I
| found:
|
| https://x.com/MaskedMelonUsk/status/1987338574606356901?s=20
| abhinavb05 wrote:
| Sponsored by bluesky
| andypiper wrote:
| I know the author, and do not believe that this is a true
| statement.
| pfraze wrote:
| Nope not us!
| mnls wrote:
| Bluesky? Fediverse? Really?
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Does anybody know what happened to the great "Mary Meeker" (?)
| Web Internet Report, posted annually by her?
|
| I loved her compilations.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://www.mindset.ai/blogs/in-the-loop-ep19-mary-meeker-ai...
| amannm wrote:
| please put more work into AI generated content
| riffic wrote:
| can't reveal too much too soon but someone out there is quietly
| trying to make _" At least one major national government or major
| city will launch an official presence on BOTH Bluesky AND the
| ActivityPub Fediverse in 2026"_ happen.
| tolerance wrote:
| Norman Cantani?
| DustinBrett wrote:
| I still have yet to see a BlueSky link in the wild.
| Kye wrote:
| Check any sports subreddit. I also see them on Discord all the
| time.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/domain/bsky.app/
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Probably because of the pile on a few months ago about "no X
| links in my subreddit" because Musk is allegedly a Nazi.
| anentropic wrote:
| OTOH I feel a bit negative towards companies that stayed on X
| without at least also having either BlueSky or Mastodon
| Kye wrote:
| >> _" At least one fully independent ATProto stack -- PDS, Relay,
| and AppView operating without dependency on Bluesky PBC
| infrastructure -- will achieve viability in 2026, meaning it has
| paying customers or sustainable funding. This will be the year
| ATProto proves (or fails to prove) it can exist beyond Bluesky-
| the-company."_
|
| Isn't Blacksky already there? I haven't kept up, but I thought
| the last big banning blowup led to prioritizing finishing the
| AppView.
| jollymonATX wrote:
| It's sad that even hitting these meteics will reault in little
| actual growth. Bluesky is devoid of shareable content. Threads
| is.... just go to threads and use it and I bet you come away
| feeling like its unusable like I did. Fediverse when I browse it
| is like venturing into a ghost town. EVER time I see a blog with
| a linked acct I check it out. Always they are devoid of
| interactions. Wordpress blogs have real comments (sometimes) with
| real interactions happening at a decent clip. Thats the real
| state of things. Numbers go up predictions like this make no
| sense to me for one big fat reason, where are the interactions?
| (I want it to work just ftr)
| conception wrote:
| How does bluesky have no shareable content? My friends who
| twittered now all use BS. Haven't noticed a change in "check
| this out"
| jollymonATX wrote:
| Point to publically posted bs links or embeds please then.
| Not F2F shares. That's what I am talking about. X and FB have
| those in droves and they are a real growth driver.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Hasn't been my experience with Lemmy and some closer knit
| communities on Mastodon. My interests are niche, though.
|
| IMO if you were used to the smaller communities of the pre-
| social media internet, fediverse stuff feels familiar. You
| aren't going to get 256k upvotes like you will on Reddit, but
| you can have some interesting conversations.
| rcarmo wrote:
| My anecdotal experience is that I still have to dive into X to
| follow some people. I use mostly Mastodon, occasionally look into
| BlueSky, and pretty much stopped caring about Threads since Meta
| decided to treat the EU differently. I'd say the grand social
| experiment the post portrays just isn't happening.
| saltysalt wrote:
| I predict 2026 will see a mass return to self-hosted blogging
| (and the Linux desktop, natch).
| jollymonATX wrote:
| This is my hope as well, but fear of ai scrape is real among
| folks I have chatted with this about.
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| As others here below have noticed, there is no match between
| actual data and predictions made by the authors.
|
| Which is definitely strange, and we should ask: why?
| krapp wrote:
| Because people tend to predict the future they wish would
| happen, not what the data says would be most likely.
|
| The same thing happens with every HN predictions thread.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Social media compromises
|
| - asymmetric social activity - standing in a crowd social
| activity - discovery - curated/accidental/mediated - directed
| presentation - advertising
|
| I'm not too sure what Bluesky's approach is but all the different
| approaches to federation and replacing Twitter fail to be as
| simple and intuitive as adding your mate to a WhatsApp group, nor
| as simple as "everyone is on Twitter"
|
| Twitter will tend to revert to its mean (imagine a pub where
| suddenly the MAGA convention from next door comes in and starts
| ordering drinks - the pub will change it's nature but plenty of
| the tables will just carry on.
|
| You just don't know which ones, till you sit down and listen to
| the conversation- a lot like real life.
|
| I'm not convinced that _any_ technological change will make a
| difference - whatsapp already solves the "invite people you know"
| problem, and that's good enough for most of the world. The
| problem of "somewhere in the world Paul Dirac is chatting with
| Einstein, can I listen in" is solved with scientific
| publications, "can I join in" is unsolvable and I think a
| misunderstanding of what was once happening on Twitter back when
| people cared
| pfraze wrote:
| I think these are pretty good predictions, or at least line up
| with the goals we're pursuing. I believe private data will land
| in atproto, hopefully by mid year. I also expect the tooling will
| improve a lot; the new Tap tool has made backfill and sync a lot
| easier, and the moderation tools are also going to improve a lot
| (the Osprey automod tool built with ROOST is great). That's all
| pretty key for building applications.
|
| Also quick prediction the Atmosphere conference in March should
| be a good time
| mosura wrote:
| Slightly tangentially, I expect GitHub to seriously lose lustre
| as developer de facto social network, with codeberg and self
| hosted forgejo taking off, leading to a fediverse of instances.
|
| That is likely to be a bigger trend than any shift in normie open
| social web stuff.
| anentropic wrote:
| What would be driving that trend?
|
| I dropped X and adopted BlueSky & Mastodon, but must admit I
| find a bit annoying when projects don't use GitHub... I need to
| set up a new account to interact with them, if I star the repo
| my stars end up spread across multiple services.
|
| I guess the ideal end goal would be if GitHub federated too and
| then some of that stuff would work.
|
| The appeal of ditching X was obvious but I can't see the same
| for GitHub at the moment.
| tcdent wrote:
| Social movements don't need to be quantifiably better to take
| off.
|
| When the relevant audience is bored enough to be open to
| something new, it only takes a few influential people to tip
| the scales.
|
| People don't want to be truly revolutionary; that takes
| actual risk. They want the appearance of being revolutionary
| with minimal downside and social reassurance.
|
| (w/r/t GitHub there's already enough buzz in the right
| circles and it will likely happen this year.)
| tolerance wrote:
| I suspect that Nostr is the protocol that provides people with
| the type of platform that people actually want when the wax
| technotic over the Web past and present. The issue is that it's
| presented in a way that is apathetic with regard to the
| sociopolitical concerns of the people who are emotionally
| invested in the future of the 'Open Social Web'.
|
| You would think that people would be in a rush to build with a
| technology that appears to be simple to implement and holds
| communities directly responsible for their conduct and content.
|
| Maybe I'm seeing things the wrong way.
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