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The protagonists of this shift are obviously WhatsApp groups (always owned by Meta), which allow you to share opinions, experiences and material of all kinds within restricted and separate circles of friends or colleagues or relatives, etc., allowing participants to behave more spontaneously than is possible on traditional social networks, where everything we do is observed by a multitude of people with whom we have very different relationships.

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From Whatsapp to Discord

If on WhatsApp groups are formed mainly on the basis of personal affinities, elsewhere they are based on shared interests, as is the case with Telegram or Discord and to a lesser extent than Mastodon. With the exception of the latter, it is also worth pointing out how these platforms have numbers that have nothing to envy to traditional social networks: WhatsApp is a giant that can count on 2.24 billion monthly users, Telegram reaches around 700 million and Discord exceeds 200 million.

It is always Sarah Wilson who has systematized the differences between the various digital bonfires, dividing them into private messaging (e.g. WhatsApp), micro-community (Discord) and a more elusive form related to shared experiences (Wilson gives the example of Fortnite, to which you connect not only to play, but also to meet friends and share your experiences on this platform with them).

While the number of users of Facebook has stopped growing for about a year, while Twitter he has to deal with the chaos of Elon Musk and even Instagram is in the throes with some unexpected difficultyThe digital bonfire phenomenon it seems to still be on the launch pad and, if anything, destined to consolidate further (at the other end of the spectrum we find the TikTok phenomenon, which is recreating a sort of television that no longer has any “social network” function, but only entertainment) .

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The future is private

According to David Nemer, professor of Media Studies at Harvard, this shift towards what has also been defined “private social networks” allows people Of “be fully engaged in topics and subjects in which they are interested”offering them the opportunity to have stimulating conversations “Without the fear of being attacked by trolls, bots, ghost accounts and more”.

Other reasons have been identified in a studio which showed that 60% of users under thirty prefer it talk online via private messages because they offer the possibility of “speak more freely”, while 38% of them explained that they only use Facebook to take advantage of the private message function. After years spent at cure a personality online also worrying about accumulating as many followers as possible, these aspects gradually seem to fade into the background, even for the desire to more privacy and security.

All that does not mean that traditional social networks are destined to disappearbut which will increasingly function as a megaphone for influencers, creators, celebrities, politicians, popularizers and personalities who need to reach as many people as possible; while they will be used in an increasingly passive mode by normal users. Which – after years of showing vacation photos (even) to complete strangers – are quickly sharing again private content with smaller and more trusted circles. As it should be.

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