On July 10, Ulrike Klinger gave her inaugural lecture as full professor at the Aula of the University of Amsterdam. In the lecture, she argued that the first age of social media is over. For twenty years, platforms like Facebook and Twitter dominated public debate, first celebrated as democratic spaces, then condemned for disinformation, toxic speech, and polarization, yet consistently treated as “emerging” technologies and left largely unregulated.

That story no longer holds. Audiences are fragmented across niche platforms; feeds are flooded with short videos, emotional imagery, and AI-generated content. Platform companies are powerful, commercial, and openly political. Data extraction has displaced communication as their core logic. European regulation is pushing back, but its reach remains uncertain. Shifts in perceptions, use, business models, ideology, and regulation mark the beginning of a new platform era and demand a new research agenda.