Orkut Büyükkökten, the founder of the once-popular social networking platform Orkut, is calling for a fundamental rethink of social media, arguing that platforms designed to maximize engagement have pushed genuine human relationships into the background.
In an open letter published on Orkut.com, Büyükkökten urged internet users to support a movement aimed at rebuilding social networking around real people, meaningful friendships and communities rather than algorithms, advertising, and AI-generated content.
His campaign comes more than 12 years after Google shut down Orkut, which became particularly popular in India and Brazil during the 2000s.
Büyükkökten argues that social media has drifted away from its original purpose. He believes platforms have increasingly optimized their products for attention and time spent online instead of helping people develop lasting relationships.
The growing presence of automated accounts, deepfakes, AI-generated posts, and autonomous agents has added another concern: users can no longer always be certain that the person or account they are interacting with represents a real human being.
The campaign invites people to visit Orkut.com, add their names in support, and share a digital supporter card with someone they would like to bring into the proposed movement.
As of October 10, more than 260,000 people from over 115 countries had reportedly signed up to support the initiative, although the figure has varied across reports as the campaign has gained traction.
However, there is an important distinction between a campaign to revive Orkut’s philosophy and the actual return of the platform. Büyükkökten has not announced an official relaunch date or confirmed the features of a new social network.
Why does Orkut’s founder want to reclaim social media?
Büyükkökten believes social media has lost sight of the reason people originally embraced it.
In his open letter, he recalled a time when connecting with someone on the internet felt exciting because it offered the opportunity to meet people who shared your interests, experiences or outlook on life.
Over time, he argues, platforms increasingly prioritized engagement metrics, advertising revenue, and the ability to keep users scrolling.
“Feeds built around engagement, not connection. A generation of kids surrendered to algorithms that addicted them, divided them, and sold them to advertisers,” he wrote.
His criticism centers on the business model behind many modern social networks. Recommendation algorithms are often designed to predict what users will watch, read, like, or share next. That can make platforms more engaging, but engagement does not necessarily translate into meaningful relationships.
A user might spend hours scrolling through thousands of posts without having a substantial conversation with a single person.
Büyükkökten argues that this disconnect has contributed to a social media environment in which visibility and attention often matter more than friendship and belonging.
What role does artificial intelligence play in his campaign?
Büyükkökten sees artificial intelligence as an important new challenge for social networking.
AI can generate convincing text, photographs, videos and even simulated conversations. Automated agents can interact with users and produce content at a scale that would be difficult for individual people to match.
Deepfakes can also make it harder to distinguish authentic recordings from manipulated material.
For the Orkut founder, these developments threaten one of the basic assumptions behind social media: that there is a real person on the other side of an interaction.
His concern is not simply that AI-generated content may be misleading. It is that an internet increasingly filled with synthetic personalities and automated interactions could make authentic human relationships harder to establish and maintain.
Büyükkökten acknowledges that AI is an extraordinary technology. However, he argues that technical capabilities should not become a substitute for the emotional experiences that make relationships valuable.
“You know what AI can’t create? Joy. Hope. Gratitude. Wonder. Amusement. Inspiration. Love,” he wrote.
The statement reflects his personal philosophy rather than a technical conclusion about what AI systems may be capable of simulating. His broader point is that human connection should remain the purpose of social networking, even as the technology becomes more sophisticated.
Why does Büyükkökten believe online communities matter more than feeds?
One of the strongest themes in the open letter is the difference between being an audience member and belonging to a community.
Büyükkökten recalled the communities that helped define the original Orkut experience. Users created groups around shared interests, hobbies, daily routines and personal experiences.
Some communities were built around particular motorcycles, bus routes, or music. Others brought together people who shared an inside joke or simply disliked Mondays.
These groups provided a relatively simple way for people to find others who understood their interests.
“In a feed you’re an audience, in a community you’re a member,” he wrote.
The distinction captures what he hopes to restore.
A recommendation feed typically presents content selected by an algorithm based on predicted relevance or engagement. A community, by contrast, can give users a shared identity and a reason to return that goes beyond consuming another post.
Büyükkökten wants future social networks to place greater emphasis on those connections, giving people ways to build relationships around common interests instead of encouraging them to compete for attention.
What made the original Orkut so popular?
Orkut launched in January 2004 as a social networking project created by Büyükkökten while he was working at Google.
The platform became especially popular in India and Brazil, where it served as an introduction to online social networking for millions of users.
Its appeal came partly from its simplicity. Members could create personalized profiles, connect with friends, post messages, and join communities devoted to everything from cricket and Bollywood to school friendships and everyday interests.
Two features became particularly memorable: scraps and testimonials.
Scraps allowed users to leave messages on friends’ profiles, creating a public record of casual conversations and inside jokes.
Testimonials gave friends the opportunity to write descriptions or messages about one another, adding a personal and often playful dimension to online identities.
Communities were another defining feature. Rather than relying exclusively on a centralized algorithm to recommend content, users could actively seek out groups built around subjects that mattered to them.
For many people in India, Orkut became a place to reconnect with schoolmates, make new friends and maintain relationships across cities and countries.
The nostalgia surrounding the platform today is closely tied to that experience of a less crowded, more personal internet.
Why did Google shut Orkut down in 2014?
Despite its early success, Orkut eventually lost ground to competing social networks, particularly Facebook.
Facebook’s rapid global expansion changed the social media landscape, while Google’s own priorities shifted toward other products and platforms.
Google announced Orkut’s closure in June 2014, and the service shut down on September 30 that year.
The company said it wanted to focus its energy on other social products, including YouTube, Blogger, and Google+.
By then, Orkut had become less central to the global social networking market, even though it retained a loyal user base in countries such as India and Brazil.
Its closure marked the end of one of the internet’s best-known early social networks.
But the platform’s original model of interest-based communities and direct social interaction has continued to attract interest, particularly as users grow more concerned about algorithmic feeds, AI-generated content and the commercial pressures shaping modern platforms.
Is Orkut actually coming back?
Not yet, at least not as a confirmed relaunched social network.
The campaign on Orkut.com asks users to register their support for a more human-centered internet and to help build interest in a possible revival.
It does not provide a confirmed launch date, a finalized product roadmap or a detailed list of features for a new platform.
The distinction matters because a large number of supporters demonstrates interest in the idea, but it does not automatically establish that a viable social network is ready to launch.
A new service would still need to address familiar challenges, including privacy, moderation, harassment, account authenticity, security, infrastructure costs and the ability to sustain itself financially.
It would also need to persuade users to join and remain active when their friends and communities already use established platforms.
Büyükkökten’s campaign signals a desire to revisit Orkut’s original principles, but the practical form that effort might take remains uncertain.
Büyükkökten has tried to build social networks before
The new campaign is not his first attempt to create an alternative to mainstream social media.
After Orkut shut down, Büyükkökten founded Hello, a social networking service launched in 2016 that emphasized shared interests and connections.
Hello sought to create communities around people’s passions rather than reproduce the conventional feed-driven model of social media. The service later closed in 2020.
Büyükkökten subsequently hinted at another project through Orkut.com in 2022, prompting speculation about a possible return to social networking.
In 2024, he also discussed a social platform that would use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help people connect and build communities. That project did not develop into a publicly launched successor to Orkut.
These efforts suggest that his interest in rebuilding online communities predates the latest wave of generative AI.
The current campaign, however, places a stronger emphasis on authenticity, human relationships and concerns about synthetic content.
Can social media be redesigned around real relationships?
That is the larger question raised by Büyükkökten’s initiative.
Social platforms have traditionally faced competing incentives. Keeping users engaged can increase advertising revenue, while meaningful social interaction does not always require people to spend more time on an app.
A platform designed to maximize attention might reward emotionally charged content or continuously recommend new material. A platform designed around community could instead prioritize group participation, trusted relationships and relevant conversations.
Neither model automatically guarantees a healthy online environment.
Communities can also become hostile or exclusionary, and smaller networks still need effective moderation and privacy protections.
The challenge is therefore not simply removing algorithms. Recommendation systems can help users discover people and interests they would otherwise miss.
The more important question is what those systems are designed to optimize: prolonged attention or meaningful participation.
Büyükkökten’s proposal is to make authentic relationships the priority rather than treating them as a byproduct of engagement.
What does the campaign ask people to do?
The immediate request is straightforward.
Büyükkökten has invited users to visit Orkut.com, add their names to the campaign and share a digital supporter card with someone they would like to include in the movement.
He wants the initiative to grow through personal invitations and a shared belief that the internet should help people build friendships and find communities.
The campaign is also an appeal to people who remember the original Orkut experience, but it is not limited to former users. Its message is directed at anyone who believes modern social media has become too focused on advertising, algorithmic feeds and automated content.
The founder’s closing argument sums up his approach: “Let’s stop optimising for attention and start optimising for each other.”
What happens next?
For now, the campaign’s growing supporter base is the clearest sign of momentum.
Whether that support translates into a new social network will depend on what Büyükkökten develops next and whether he can turn the principles outlined in his letter into a practical, sustainable service.
A successful revival would require more than nostalgia. It would need to offer a compelling reason for people to leave familiar platforms, bring their friends along and invest time in new communities.
It would also need to demonstrate that a human-centered social network can operate without simply recreating the same engagement incentives that Büyükkökten criticizes.
The future of Orkut remains uncertain, but its founder has made his ambition clear. He wants an internet where people are treated as people rather than attention metrics, and where belonging matters more than endless scrolling.
“An algorithm can’t make life worth living. But a friend can. A community can,” he wrote.
Whether that philosophy becomes the foundation of a new platform or remains a rallying cry for a different kind of internet, the campaign taps into a growing debate about what social media should actually be for.
