With the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, the era of the mega-social media platform may be over.

People are fleeing the bird in record numbers, and other major sites like Instagram and Facebook are seeing their fair share of the exodus.

But people aren’t just logging off the internet for good – they’re leaving for smaller, more intimate networks like Mastodon, Discord and Twitch.

These allow people to interact more with their chosen inner circle and less with the public as a whole, turning the social media experience into a living room instead of a public square.

Facebook seems to be catching on and shifting their algorithm to accommodate the new way people want to interact.

But Instagram has screwed the pooch by making its algorithm less intimate and personal than ever before, frustrating users who just want to see their friend’s dogs and not an influencer’s new perfume ad.

And Twitter is doing whatever Twitter is doing – probably on its last legs.

It’s a weird full circle that brings people back to some of what made the early Internet so sociable: smaller communities with more control over who you interact with.