The quilt is gone, the fight is over

Last week in this column, I said that “social media is collapsing into WhatsApp.” I think I was a bit hasty. The collapse is still ongoing, but its direction has changed slightly. Because the second signal that came this week arrived from Jack Dorsey. Yes, the founder of Twitter. But this time, he is on stage as one of the founders of decentralization.

For years, I have been saying that decentralized structures would enter our lives. Now we are starting to see the first effects. Dorsey’s new social media venture is not actually a classic platform; it is a network infrastructure that works via Bluetooth and can only communicate with those who are physically nearby. It has no center, no server, and no possibility of censorship. For now, the first versions of the software, built on a “peer-to-peer” protocol, are in the testing phase. But it is already clear: We are no longer talking about a platform, but a communication protocol.

What does this mean? It means this: All those efforts that states apply to censor content on social media will no longer have much meaning. Because these new social media structures are already moving far away from being accessible from the outside. In other words, content no longer lives in a center, but within the network itself.

I have been saying it for years: We should not call these “social media.” These structures are no longer media, but communication infrastructure. It is more accurate to think of them that way. Because we are no longer viewers or followers, we are just a part of the nodes. We are all part broadcaster, part network provider.

I explained this topic to my students years ago in the MIS courses I taught at Okan University. I said many times that centralization would dissipate, power distribution would shift to individuals, and freedoms would break traditional censorship mechanisms. If there are those who remember, they can see much more clearly now what I meant. At the same time, I shared this foresight years ago in my articles in Bloomberg Businessweek. Those who are curious can find them in the archives.

At the point we have reached today, the transition of social media to a more resilient, freer, and uncensorable structure is not just a technological, but a political and sociological revolution. For structures that perform “content moderation” with bureaucratic laziness, it is a pathetic end: Another one of their toys has been taken away from them.

Yes, the quilt is gone. The fight is over.

But a new story is beginning. If you are in a decision-making position, make sure there are people around you who have read this process in advance. Because the next ten years will be one of the foggiest and most uncertain journeys we have ever seen.

But an idea can pass through the fog. A bullet might not, but an idea can. And sometimes, just that idea is enough: for a system to collapse.