14 predictions about 2024

A year ago, as I sat down to write my predictions for 2023, two things seemed unusually clear. One was that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was disrupting the old order in social networking far faster and more dramatically than even his biggest detractors had predicted. The other is that the launch of ChatGPT just a few weeks earlier had set in motion a much more significant shift — though the scope of that shift would turn out to be much wider than I guessed at the time.

Twelve months later, we’re living in a changed world. Musk killed off the Twitter brand, along with at least half of its revenues, and drove more than 100 million people onto a rival platform built by Meta. And while the shifting fortunes of our biggest social networks continue to play a critical role in shaping politics, culture, and society, the speed with which generative artificial intelligence systems are improving now seem likely to prove even more significant. 

Over the next year, I expect to see both trends accelerating: on one hand, a once-in-a-generation realignment in text-based social networking that will further entrench Meta as the biggest player in the space; and on the other, the proliferation of generative AI into every digital surface that we touch, and much of the infrastructure that powers it. The trends will have their highest-profile collision to date in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, where platform policies and enforcement mechanisms could once again prove hugely consequential — for American democracy, and for the platforms themselves.

Just thinking about it all is enough to make me want to go lie down for a couple weeks — which, upon sending out today’s newsletter, is exactly what I intend to do. Before that, though, I have a few more thoughts on what we can expect in 2024, and Zoë has some to share as well. 

In the meantime, thanks for supporting Platformer through a momentous year. If you’d like to give a subscription as a gift to someone this year, you can do so at this link.

I.

As always, let’s start out by looking at what I told you would happen in the past year, and see how I did. 

What I said: “The media will begin its divorce from Twitter. Elon Musk’s