“Dark Social” is the notion that people share “content” via private/secure messaging apps, one-to-one or one-to-select-group. That social sharing activity can’t be measured in any useful way. There is no freely-available prosumer tool to quantify the sharing of a link. Hence, they call it “dark social.” When you hear someone say “dark social,” they’re bemoaning the inability to get click reports off of actual conversation. Because when you see someone on the street head-down in their phone and dabbing away at the screen, they’re not cut off from the outside world. They’re talking to people. Fuck your Black Mirror narrative – they’re just more interested in a window to their friends and family than they are in you peering at them in judgement. And all that action of being engaged in a life of having your loved ones in your hand all the time and being able to show them things and talk about it? That’s Dark Social now.
— Warren Ellis on today’s MORNING, COMPUTER post.
Lost Signal 