I struggle with the ethics of this. On one hand, social media seems to be socially deleterious. On the other, outright banning mass communication sounds horrifically draconian, and probably harmful in its own right. The idea I end up leaning toward is banning the way social media platforms monetize their users; targeted advertising. That's probably socially harmful on its own, or at the very least isn't too great a loss in terms of efficiency or individual rights. Of course, it's possible that social media platforms find another way to successfully monetize, and such a ban fails to eliminate social media in its current form, but if that happens we could always try again with another policy until the desired outcome is achieved.
Sure! I think the Arab Spring mostly was possible because of social media, and wouldn't have happened as fast or maybe at all otherwise. Overall it seems like the net effects of that were positive, although a highly tumult time-period obviously and still has lingering effects that aren't super great.
Besides that I'm also having a hard time coming up with positive examples, hence the question.
> I think the Arab Spring mostly was possible because of social media
You think the arab spring was positive? I would put this as an example of the terrible things that were done using social media.
> Besides that I'm also having a hard time coming up with positive examples, hence the question.
I don't think there is any good thing of social media, in the end, besides the little entertainment. The small pleasures are not worth the power given to the platform owners.
It triggered the downfall of multiple oppressive and authoritarian states, so a net positive, yeah. But I'm also a fan of democracy and human rights, so I understand not everyone shares the same perspective.
Another positive: I've been able to connect with people about various interests and had conversations I would never been able to have, especially when you grow up in rural areas where the place has a population less than 1000. It's really hard to find people who share your interests in those cases, and social media makes it really easy to find those people.
Social media refers to the mode as well as the medium of interaction, but central to the idea of social media interactions are that they are mediated by a third party. Usenet is a protocol, and is decentralized. I think a better analogue for social media in the Usenet context would be something closer to BBSes, though I don't see why using certain newsgroups which have specific socializing focus couldn't be considered engaging with/using social media conceptually, but this would not capture the word social media as it is used, which implies social media properties, and social media nearly implies websites, as that is where the social aspects come from: not just being able to post, but to comment and react, but perhaps most importantly to my mind, social media must be able to be shared, and that usually means URLs, but not always. Conceptually, I think Usenet fits into certain social media shaped holes, but at the same time, it doesn't fit into others. Timelines and feeds are another aspect that I haven't touched on, but Usenet lets you do whatever your client lets you, but for that same reason it doesn't fit quite right in the concept space, for the same reason you wouldn't call IRC social media.
