We are entering a new phase of sackcloth and ashes in Silicon Valley. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s decision to create Bluesky was based on his discomfort with what he had previously built. He wanted to atone. Biz Stone, his co-founder, had turned into one of social media’s biggest critics by 2011 after he left to found Medium, a soft, user-centred blogging platform. The first generation of founders are looking back at their works and asking: “What hath God wrought?”

Now comes news that Stone is teaming up with one of Pinterest’s founders, Evan Sharp, to build a new app called Tangle. Tangle is that most tangled of things: an antisocial media app. Their new company, West Co, says it is “a new kind of social network, designed for intentional living”. For now, it is invite-only. The app works by users sharing personal objectives at the beginning of each day, or “intentions”, with their friends, and later reflecting on how they have been achieved, rather than an endless content scroll like other apps.

Social media trying to fix social media is a recurring theme in the culture. For years, to escape the problems of permanence, we were promised disappearing feeds or one-time systems like the original Snapchat. The last popular attempt was BeReal, which peaked in 2022. An app designed for a small group of friends to take photos of themselves or their immediate environment at the same time. It was fun, harking back to the early days of social media, but without a deeper use, it couldn’t sustain the hype and now it only crawls on its belly.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Sharp described his new app. “What could I build that might help address some of the terrible devastation of the human mind and heart that we’ve wrought over the last 15 years?” The answer, apparently, is an app that wakes you up by asking: “What is your intention for today?” This may underwhelm some. But the makers emphasise that the product could pivot; its final form is not sealed.

The problem is that social media remains chiefly a broadcast medium: about 75-90% of users don’t post; they simply consume. Engaging people enough to type is hard. Another of West’s previous projects, Jelly, was a search engine meant to give human answers to detailed questions from real humans. It ran out of funds not long after it ran out of willing answerers. Timelines work because they aggregate a little great content and push it down everyone’s pipes.

At the margins, some systems suggest a way forward. Peloton was an unlikely pandemic-era hit. An exercise bike that you could acquire for $2,000 with a screen attached. Users could take live classes, mostly spinning classes, and interact with others logged on in real-time. Giving a virtual high-five to Rudolf in Düsseldorf might seem cringeworthy, but many found it a joyful approximation of community: time-limited, collective, and without a feed.

The feeling people want, that Tangle identifies, is a sense of collective purpose — without your life being permanently imprinted on the web. Rather than an isolating scroll where you interact with people’s eclectic thoughts, you address a specific activity along with your friends. Our nobler instincts still live alongside the ragebait, anger and lifestyle-porn envy. At Pinterest, Sharp decided the company would optimise for “inspiration” in its algorithmic discovery mechanisms. Insofar as it followed that principle, it succeeded.

Tangle may fail. But its founders, whether to salve their own consciences or to make another billion, have correctly identified that the world is sick of staring into the doomscroll void. They must know that many great minds have already approached the problem and failed. Today’s version of social media still feels like the end of history. Bar TikTok, the same companies as 10 years ago still dominate. But just as AI search has undermined the supposedly unkillable Google search, the timeline’s reign may end. For traditional social media giants, the killer may be apps that dissuade users from doomscrolling and put community-led interactions at their core.

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Gavin Haynes is a journalist and former editor-at-large at Vice.

@gavhaynes

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