All social media apps are starting to look similar and ultimately dull

With so many social media platforms in the world, you’d think the experience would be at least a bit varied from platform to platform. Even just one short decade ago, everything from Twitter and Facebook to Instagram and Snapchat offered something different, engaging users in their own unique way. From disappearing pictures to text-only interactions, the social media landscape was more of an a-la-carte situation than an all-in-one buffet.

That is decidedly not the case anymore. As time has slowly but steadily marched on, all social media apps have started to look the same, adopting plenty of features, privacy policies, and monetization strategies from competitors, all in the name of driving neverending engagement. Sure, many of these services and apps are now owned by the same company, but the phenomenon goes beyond Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Suffice it to say, this amalgamation of social media is more than just a Meta problem.

From Stories to hidden likes

The history of social media platforms slowly evolving to operate nearly identically is as lengthy as it is detailed. While there isn’t enough internet bandwidth in the world to explain them all, there have been some key moments that drove this shift towards banality over innovation.

One of the earlier instances of this kind of copycat behavior was in 2016 when Instagram launched its Stories feature, a clear ripoff of the same feature on Snapchat, which Facebook failed to acquire in 2013. Since then, the feature has been rolled out to virtually every single social media platform on the market, from TikTok to even WhatsApp.

Social media companies, of course, did not stop there. For years, platforms have been wide open to stealing and restyling competitors’ features in service of a more complete social media experience, and it’s getting a bit egregious. When TikTok rose to prominence, for example, the addictive short-form video functionality was quickly adapted to other services, finding its way to the Meta platforms in the form of Reels.

The same happened with Twitter after the Elon Musk acquisition. In mid 2023, Meta rolled out Threads, a practical twin of the short-form text platform that had encouraged so many Twitter alternatives. Musk even took legal action in an effort to curb the blatant copycatting, but the reality is, this kind of thing is essentially legal, as long as you follow the rules.

The legality of stolen features

Seriously, why is this allowed?

While the passing around of social media features seems like an obvious infringement of copyright law, it’s simply not. From a legal standpoint, this kind of like-minded innovation is completely allowed as long as there isn’t a clear case of theft or corporate espionage. And social media companies very clearly know this.

For example, when Twitter and Elon Musk threatened to sue Meta for stealing and recreating Twitter in the form of Threads, the response from the social media giant was very telling in regard to how these kind of cases are viewed: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

Related

How to use Threads, Facebook’s new Twitter alternative, without sacrificing your privacy

This isn’t the Twitter replacement you were looking for

The legal basis of feature stealing lies within the technical side of these platforms. More specifically, if you aren’t clearly stealing code, you’re as good as gold. And given these kinds of platforms certainly aren’t groundbreaking when it comes to the technology behind them, recreating features like disappearing messages without stealing code just isn’t that hard.

So the trend of social media apps all morphing into the same apps is unlikely to change. Meanwhile, all of my social apps look and function too similarly for my comfort, making me wonder why I use any of them at all.