(1) The public internet is better for accountability than social media.
(2) People fled the public internet for social media because of 1.
(3) 2 is bad and we should undo it.
1 seems right. I want to argue with 2. It’s obviously right in some cases. The randos in my mentions thing happens. But sometimes, people go to Facebook because that’s where the people are. Facebook’s been optimizing for this, and almost exclusively this, for a long time. So any discourse-building strategy that doesn’t take into account this competitor will hit walls it can’t see.
Three claims here:
(1) The public internet is better for accountability than social media.
(2) People fled the public internet for social media because of 1.
(3) 2 is bad and we should undo it.
1 seems right. I want to argue with 2. It’s obviously right in some cases. The randos in my mentions thing happens. But sometimes, people go to Facebook because that’s where the people are. Facebook’s been optimizing for this, and almost exclusively this, for a long time. So any discourse-building strategy that doesn’t take into account this competitor will hit walls it can’t see.