We Don’t Need Social Media – OneZero

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes laid out an argument for dismantling the social media behemoth... via antitrust legislation... a new age of innovation and competition... maybe not... competition  demands more data... engagement ... efforts to increase competition risk simply aggravating these problems....
We could simply choose not to have social media at all anymore.... We don’t need social media to make friends or build relationships... to become engaged in politics... explore our cities ... hail a cab ... hear new music ... discover subcultures ... plan our lives.... We also don’t need social media to ... make corporate or government surveillance ... harassment and stalking ... spread conspiracy and violence easier... poison our democratic discourse or to infect our minds ... ​W​e don’t even need social media to show us ads.... the connections social media helps us make are often flimsy, that the perspective of the world we gain from using it is warped, and that the time we spend with it is better spent doing almost anything else.