Ask HN: Are we observing the death of social networks?

This actually reminds me of an article https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2025/12/ai-companionshi.... "“We believe that there is no material problem—whether created by nature or by technology—that cannot be solved with more technology.” In this same spirit, Zuckerberg began to suggest the idea that AI chatbots could fill in some of the socialization that people are missing."

I'l probably have to think about this more to see if there's any logic behind it but maybe there's a connection with us oscillating between social media and social networking...?

also you know how Mirror Theory...or maybe Plato's Cave where the shadows are what we see of real objects...is about how our "realities" are heavily filtered representations of the external world? maybe we somehow feel that, as a bottom line, it doesn't matter what the representations of social connection are? and if we perceive AI as a source of social connection...

On most social networks, each post is met with flame bait and off-hand cynicism. Even the most benign post is dragged down with comments about how stupid/boring/etc the poster is. Why people insist on being so unpleasant, I'll never know. But they are very loud about it.

Then there is the endless stream of AI spam, GOP and foreign propaganda, tracking and advertising. It would be nice if the ads weren't nearly all fake products and snake oil. It seems the real product advertisers don't want any part of it either.

People are given ample incentives to leave it all behind and focus more on real life instead.

I would argue that social networks died a decade or more ago, and were replaced by social media. When I joined Facebook in 2006 a big part of it was finding and connecting with friends from school. It was cool to see their vacation photos or kids' graduation pics. But now it seems that friends have been replaced with followers, and instead of peer to peer connections of a social network, we have one to many broadcast of social media.

Could this be "social network" in the generic sense and not just the electronic sense?