alt Hacker News>Social media is a cancer on society as a whole, let alone children who are still trying to figure out who they are. It serves absolutely no positive purpose that couldn't be done at least as well through private chat groups and the like.
Social media provides decentralized information transmission, so people (kids are people) are able to obtain information without it first being filtered through a small cabal of self-interested media corporations and governments. If there was no social media, the Iran war would probably have overwhelming popular support like the Iraq one and there'd already be US boots on the ground.
Replies
The way how corporations like Meta implemented modern social medias filter information as well. It does it in a different way than TV, but personalized information bubbles are important arguments again using "social" medias.
Except all major social media sites are also corporations with their own interests. I'd rather the business model of traditional media that rides on journalistic reputation to a recommendation feed where the only job of it is to keep you on the site, especially when said feed can easily be manipulated.
No media organisation is perfect but your description of social media as some nirvana of decentralised truth is very questionable.
On the other hand, without social media, there might not be a Trump government in the first place.
There isn't US boots on the ground because that would be absolute suicide, have you followed anything that's been going on? It is an asymmetric war they cannot win.
And yes "decentralised" meaning we have personal echo-chambers or a swarm of Elon sycophant accounts with inflated number of views and bots mass liking each extremist post. LLMs are going to put astroturfing campaigns on steroids.