17 October

The problem is easy to see, and nobody wants to admit it. Social media is a disaster for societies, a 24/7 assault on the trust that holds them together. It makes all views equivalent, the most pig-ignorant, bigoted bullshit suddenly has as much power as knowledge accumulated over 2000 years. It’s a particularly American, libertarian set of beliefs from the US, built into the platforms themselves. Everything we need to do to fix this is already poisoned as ‘authoritarian’, by these beliefs built into the platforms. Why we couldn’t even do basic public health against Covid. No-brainers like switching to almost free clean energy are opposed every day, climate change action is constantly stalled, and towns are allowed to go bankrupt because social media influencers without a clue use these platforms to mobilise resistance to basic local governance.