Helping somebody find this card is a good thing, what’s disturbing is how social media platforms have become…

Helping somebody find this card is a good thing, what’s disturbing is how social media platforms have become the most intimate, granular infrastructure of our social lives. Entire communities are increasingly being run on these platforms. For profit, and not of the community. 1/6 https://t.co/TvNzorOlFv

I think it pays to really think about what this means. How our actual communities are run on platforms owned by billionaires. Everything from local commerce, to the most intimate of social interactions. In full public view as well, interactions that would normally be private. 2/6

Not just a story of corporate takeover of community life either. It means something *socially*. A profound cultural shift, about how we see our lives and societies. It’s clear that many who use social media see it as a public space. As THE community. That matters. 3/6

A lot. That our ‘public’ is now social media platforms. Where we can freely surveil each other, 24 hours a day, and become captured by the imitative rivalry of continuous comparison. Not Big Brother, much worse than that. We’re doing this to ourselves. 4/6

The glorious breathing space a traditional, official hierarchy would bring to these social transactions! To not have to constantly negotiate the most basic, practical actions, through the slurry of opinion and comparison. 5/6

To just have people getting on with things that they know how to do, without having to fight the million others who don’t have a clue about it arguing for a different way. A society of gossip and opinionated, uninformed sniping. /end