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This war shows just how broken social media has become — The global town square is in ruins
(www.theatlantic.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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The purpose of a system is what it does. "There is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.” These articles about how social media is broken are constant. It's just not a useful way to think about it. For example:
These platforms are systems. They don't have intent. There's no mens rea or anything. There is no point saying that social media is supposed to inform users when it constantly fails to inform users. In fact, it has never informed users.
Any serious discussion about social media must accept that the system is what it is, not that it's supposed to be some other way, and is currently suffering some anomaly.
I'd say all these articles about social media saying it's broken are just about maintaining the illusion of something better. As long as they can keep it up, people are going to think "it's bad but it shouldn't be!" and just keep coming back hoping it improves. And that can keep social media alive with everything it can do for everybody using it as an income stream.
It has never informed users and a pet peeve of mine is governments using fucking twitter to communicate. And businesses too lazy to create their own webpages (or pay somebody to do it for them) and pay for some hosting (deductible as a business expense, by the way) so they use fecebook instead.
Also, as somebody mentioned in a different comment, it is actually the town square, as it always was (I believe their comment evoked witch trials as an example).
Every article about how "social media is broken" are just avoiding the obvious painful truth: Humanity is broken.
I mean you're not wrong. But here we are. If you've ever tried to convince anyone of... well anything that conflicts with their views, you're probably well aware that there's no changing peoples' minds.
So I guess my honest question is... what now?
What we've always done. Soldier on fighting the good fight hoping reasonable minds prevail. And knowing that often they won't.
Wish I had a solution.