we believe that today’s environment is an ideal launching ground for the next group of billion-dollar consumer companies: vertical social networks. Ten years ago, it seemed impossible for a gaming-only network to be worth a billion dollars — now, we have two! (Twitch and Discord).

“Communities and dedicated spaces for people to talk about what’s happening will be at the forefront,” he told Co.Design in late 2020. “These community spaces will be safe and have a multitude of controls. Successful social media services will be those where people feel safe, comfortable, heard, and connected within their communities.”

Nextdoor’s feed-ranking algorithm feels less aggressively optimized than those of larger networks. There’s no such thing as “followers,” so there’s little incentive for users to post clickbait or engagement bait. The network’s intimate scope, with each user identified by their real first name, last initial, and neighborhood of residence, can make using Nextdoor feel less like a game of influence and more like, well, actually talking to your neighbors. It’s hard to go viral when your audience is limited to your immediate area.

Nextdoor has gradually evolved into something bigger and more consequential than just a digital bulletin board: In many communities, the platform has begun to step into roles once filled by America’s local newspapers. “Anecdotally, Nextdoor has gone from being kind of sub-Facebook to actually being the main platform you hear people discussing as a vector for local news and events and discussions,” says Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

Anyone who is serious about mitigating the damage done to humankind by the social web should, of course, consider quitting Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and any other algorithmically distorted informational environments that manipulate people. But we need to adopt a broader view of what it will take to fix the brokenness of the social web. That will require challenging the logic of today’s platforms—and first and foremost challenging the very concept of megascale as a way that humans gather. If megascale is what gives Facebook its power, and what makes it dangerous, collective action against the web as it is today is necessary for change. The web’s existing logic tells us that social platforms are free in exchange for a feast of user data; that major networks are necessarily global and centralized; that moderators make the rules. None of that need be the case. We need people who dismantle these notions by building alternatives. And we need enough people to care about these other alternatives to break the spell of venture capital and mass attention that fuels megascale and creates fatalism about the web as it is now.