In 2024, social media will become small.

No small influence, of course. As the US endures an election that is likely to be both divisive and often divorced from reality, social media will once again be a battleground for public opinion and perception. But the platforms on which these conversations will take place will be smaller in scale, more diverse and less interconnected.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump discovered he could speak directly to an audience of tens of millions on Twitter. Trump ditched the platform after the January 6 uprising and moved to the much smaller Truth Social, a network whose main selling point appeared to be his presence. Trump lost something precious when he was deplatformed: the ability to speak to the “big room” — a platform that reached a wide range of people interested in public affairs.

Big room spaces, like Twitter and Instagram, are constant battlegrounds for attention. They are invaluable to activists, who want messages like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter to reach new converts to the movement, and to influencers who build power and revenue by building audiences. But they are also inherently conflicted spaces, as people of different viewpoints debate what type of speech is appropriate for the space.

Trump is speaking to a smaller room now, but it’s one where virtually everyone who hears him agrees with him. He’s never going to be kicked off Truth Social because his statements, however inflammatory, are the raison d’être for the network.

Consciously or not, other platforms are moving in the same direction. Elon Musk’s compulsive destruction of Twitter turns it into a smaller room, a safe space for extremists who make it unsafe for those who don’t share their views. Reddit, long one of the most exciting spaces for informed, topical conversation, is weeding out users as it implements unpopular Muskian policies in hopes of generating much-needed revenue. Some subreddits are migrating to Discord, where their conversations won’t overlap with thousands of other topics on Reddit, but where they have full control over their chosen rules of the road.

Small room networks can be very important spaces for communities to find support and solidarity. When you’re looking for support in living with diabetes or without alcohol (two struggles I’m personally involved in), you’re not looking for confrontation, but for companionship, comfort, and constructive advice. Millions of us find these spaces in subreddits, Facebook groups, or even on special-purpose social networks like Archive of One’s Own, which connects 5 million fan fiction writers and fans each month.

But small rooms have a major drawback: they are as useful for Nazis as they are for knitters. These conversations, isolated from outside scrutiny, can normalize extreme viewpoints and lead people deeper into dark topics in which they have expressed a passing interest.

We need small room networks – they introduce strangers to each other, build social capital and connection between people who may never interact in the physical world. But they further fragment the public sphere, meaning the 2024 election could be even more fragile than we’ve seen so far in our social media age.