‘An algorithm can’t make life worth living’: Orkut founder launches campaign to reclaim social media

Orkut's founder Orkut Büyükkökten has called for the internet to be rebuilt around real people and invited the public to join a movement on Orkut. In an open letter, he said he created some of the earliest social networks more than two decades ago and has watched social media go wrong. He described the work of his life as more urgent than he ever imagined.

He blamed the decline on two decades of optimising for user attention. Feeds, he said, were designed around engagement and not connection, and a generation of children was handed to algorithms that addicted and divided them and sold them to advertisers. "No surprise that they grew up lonely and anxious," he wrote.

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The founder said he still loves the industry but despairs at what it has become, adding that things are now broken. He said artificial intelligence is extraordinary technology but is undermining the premise that made social networking worth building: that a real person was on the other side. He cited bots, AI-generated slop, deepfakes, rogue agents and synthetic content.

Recalling Orkut, he said users most often miss its communities, such as people who repaired the same motorcycle, rode the same bus route or disliked Mondays. "In a feed you're an audience, in a community you're a member," he wrote.

He argued that AI cannot create joy, hope, gratitude, wonder, amusement, inspiration or love, which he said make life worth living. He said he arrived in the world alone and with nothing, and that everything he has since gained came from love.

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He outlined a different future for the internet, built around real people with a human on the other side of every message, and not around algorithms, eyeballs or time-on-site. He said the next generation deserves communities that reward kindness, curiosity, friendship, trust and connection.

The founder said the way forward is to rebuild the internet people first loved, with authentic people and genuine belonging, but that he cannot do it alone. He asked readers to visit orkut.com and add their names, then send a supporter card to one person they want with them and explain why.

"An algorithm can't make life worth living. But a friend can. A community can," he wrote, calling on people to stop optimising for attention and start optimising for each other.