In our unpublished backstory, if not in In the Shadow of Ares itself, we established that A) social media was a passing fad, regarded in the late 2040s like disco is today; and B) due to the proliferation of spam, lunacy, disinformation, and bot-created “information pollution” online, the internet would sprout a new super-layer of bespoke “datanets”: curated private subnetworks catering to every possible interest and bias.
Likewise, the generalized corruption of the internet would lead to the initial development of a non-self-aware form of machine intelligence, “simulacrum intelligence”, as a tool for more accurate and useful searching of networked electronic data.
We may not yet have ubiquitous embedded sim-int tech automating and simplifying everything we do, or mobile agents with their pretty-convincing-but-still-kinda-dumb personality modules, but some form of differentiation and disaggregation of social media (at least) might be starting. From the Z Blog (emphasis mine):
The bigger issue for Twitter and all social media is the barrier to entry has collapsed and disaggregation is upon us. Gab has proven this. They not only have a stable platform that is better than Twitter, but it was done on a shoestring by one committed guy, in the face of massive resistance by the usual suspects. The future is bespoke platforms of like-minded users. People are looking to be free from the blue-check harpies who have ruined the large social media platforms.
That’s not far off: the polluted online environment is posited here as driving the change, rather than the internet simply becoming unusable, but the outcome is similar.