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Covid-19
Covid forced people to be inside and isolated which dramatically increased the use of the internet and social media. Also forced companies to advertise online more. -
Short-form videos/Live streaming
In 2021, a huge change to short form videos really took off, mostly due to TikTok. Youtube, twitter, instagram, snapchat, etc. all followed, adding shortform video formats to their sites. Twitch, youtube, and other sites like Kick saw massive increase in viewership and live streams. -
The Rise of AI
2022, AI started to come out with chatgpt being the first open source AI. This created a huge boom in content creation and opened endless possibilities for the future. -
Elon Musk purchases Twitter
Twitter becomes X. A huge shift in social media stemmed from this point. Musk exposed other websites but specifically X as having censored certain viewpoints and posts to push other viewpoints. Usually political, meaning the right winged stuff was censored while left winged stuff was pushed by the algorithm -
New social media sites spawn
To counter Elon Musk and X, websites like bluesky, mastadon, threads and others were created. And some others came out of nowhere that had nothing to do with Musk like BeReal, Noplace, and Yik Yak. -
AI integration and Politics
Most of 2024 social media was centered around the upcoming election and politics. AI was used in a massive way to try to trick people, create fake videos, deep fakes, etc.