Deep Questions with Cal Newport Ep. 375: Did OpenAI Just Kill Social Media?
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Oct 20, 2025 A new AI model, Sora 2, raises concerns about the future of social media, challenging giants like Facebook and Twitter. Cal discusses how TikTok's algorithm bypasses traditional social networks and suggests strategies for platforms to reclaim their advantages. He warns against the unsustainability of purely engagement-driven models. Additionally, Cal explores the impact of AI on creativity, the benefits of Substack, and offers insights on family smartphone usage. Listener questions reveal ongoing anxieties about AI's role in coding and digital social interactions.
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AI Text-To-Video Bypasses Production Limits
- Sora 2 lets anyone generate striking videos by text, bypassing real-world production limits.
- This threatens platforms built on human-made novelty because AI can cheaply produce endless novelty.
Early Platforms Had Durable Moats
- Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter became hard to displace because of their unique user bases and painstaking social graphs.
- Those social-graph advantages made each platform offer distinct, hard-to-replicate value.
TikTok Bypassed Social-Graph Defenses
- TikTok succeeded by removing requirements for known users or influencers and relying on algorithmic recommendation.
- That bypass undermined incumbents' social-graph defenses and shifted competition to pure engagement.
