this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Such a simplistic and frankly dumb take, have you really thought about what you've said at all?
Regularl people shouldn't have a voice, all media should be run and distributed by an authority of some kind? If you're not rich enough to own a newspaper company then you don't get to express yourself? Only the likes of Rupert Murdoch should be allowed to set trends and influence people?
Or did you just mean 'some women are popular on social media for doing things that don't interest me and therefore influencers and all of social media is evil and I hate it' because that's what it always seems to boil down to with kneejerk anti haters.
You seem to think that social media is about giving people a voice. It isn't. Most social media is set up either to harvest users personal data to sell for profit or to sell products to and push ideas on users. In most cases, both. It has become the primary method of distributing propaganda and influencing public opinion generally.
Cancer
you're basically Alex Jones with that level of paranoid delusion, they're just a service that exists not a communist plot to turn frogs gay.
And yes of course people attempt to control narratives on social media, you think it was better when Murdoch could just print anything he liked? and if even if you could prove it's bullshit the only thing you could do was moan about it to some dunks down the pub.
Social media isn't perfect but your characterisation of it is absurd and based on nothing but kneejerk hatred of change
If propaganda comes from Fox News it's easy to identify as propaganda, but when people you know are citing seemingly well written and researched studies it's more complicated. Propaganda has become more believable and widespread because of social media.
But even if you ignore the propaganda, social media is still used to push products with targeted advertising and harvests data to sell to whoever will pay for it. It's not a conspiracy at all it's just how capitalism works.
Even if you remove money from the equation all together, you're seeing the highlights of everyone's lives which has been shown to lead to depression and feelings of inadequacy.
Not to mention that half the posts and comments on Reddit aren't even made by humans. Lemmy might be a bit better, but honestly not much.
Literally the only thing social media is good for is memes and even that distracts people from what they're supposed to be doing and have been shown to be an effective method of spreading disinformation.
Social media is cancer.
How about instead of getting pissy over a valid criticism of companies that you have no duty to defend, either explain why any of the above isn't true or come up with some positive aspects to social media.