A logjam seems to have broken up, the poison in social media is becoming clear

Something new seems to be going on. For years I've been howling about the powerful, anti-democracy poison that social media (SM) has become. But as far as I can tell, that idea hadn't gained much traction with the public. However, in recent days something seems to have caused a wave of recognition that SM is a ruthless for-profit business and whose side it is on. SM is a mind manipulation business that maximized ad revenues. It is on the side of SM owners, executives and investors. It is not on the side of facts, truth, transparency, democracy or civil liberties. Money talks and everything else walks, just like in most other big for-profit businesses.

 

A couple of examples of recent backlash:

A reddit post about Facebook censoring 404 Media: Facebook Is Censoring 404 Media Stories About Facebook's Censorship 

Peanuts in the gallery comment: 

1. Make sure you delete every bit of information you keep on their servers. Pics, vital stats etc.

2. Lol cute, you think they actually delete anything. Best case scenario you just become a shadow profile like everyone else without an account.

3. I actually noticed a porn ad on my Facebook! For a male gay porn site. I’m not, like, offended, but I was shocked to see content I was both uninterested in and not prepared for the shock of while I was scrolling through Facebook at my OBGYN appointment. There was quite literally a whole penis on my screen lol. It had never happened before and I was so confused. This makes sense now.

4. lol. "No censorship allowed, unless it paints us in a bad picture, if it does fuck you, and we will do what we want."

Meta's new hate speech guidelines permit users to say LGBTQ people are mentally ill -- Meta will allow its billions of social media users to accuse people of being mentally ill based on their sexuality or gender identity, among broader changes it made to its moderation policies and practices Tuesday. The company’s new guidelines prohibit insults about someone’s intellect or mental illness on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, as have previous iterations. However, the latest guidelines now include a caveat for accusing LGBTQ people of being mentally ill because they are gay or transgender. 

Comment: Notice how deeply MAGA and deeply poisonous that is? 

De-influencing is a thing now: 'Maybe you'll realize what you have is good enough': Why influencers are facing a pushback -- Fast forward to 2025 [from 2019], and Diana Wiebe, who lives in Ohio, is now an influencer herself, but there is a difference between her and many others. She is trying to "de-influence" her followers from buying things they don't need. In her daily TikTok videos, the content creator – who has more than 200,000 followers on the app – asks questions like "did you want that product before it was marketed to you?", and reminds her followers that weekly and monthly clothing "hauls" are not normal. "Haul" culture is a specific kind of social-media content that originated on YouTube in which creators reveal a haul of purchases – usually clothing – to their followers.

The de-influencers share key messages, such as 'fast fashion won't make you stylish' and 'underconsumption is normal consumption' 

Wiebe is part of a movement – growing since 2023 – that rejects traditional influencer culture, one that has exploded on TikTok, with the hashtag #deinfluencing racking up more than a billion views.

Apparently, the trend of SM killing truth and censoring what is inconvenient is becoming more apparent to more people. As far as I can recall, this is the most direct, comprehensive statement of the critical, heavy reliance that MAGA has on dark free speech or demagoguery. It sounds exactly like what I have been arguing for years:

Which Party Benefits From Zuckerberg’s Move? 

The One That Lies a Lot.

Meta’s decision to drop fact-checking is obviously designed to curry favor with Trump. But it goes well beyond that.

Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (wearing a $900,000 watch) announced yesterday morning that across their over-seven-billion-user-strong social media empire—Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp—they’ll be dialing back on fact-checking. They’re also preparing to promote more “political” content (among other changes that support those two moves, like no longer filtering out trash-talking queer people or immigrants and moving what’s left of their Trust & Safety team from liberal California to conservative Texas).

Here’s the problem: Republican politicians rely on lies, distortions, and falsehoods to sell most of their policies and candidates.

They must do this because the reality of their actual goals (cut billionaires’ taxes, increase pollution, gut worker and consumer protections, defund schools and medical care, privatize and cut Social Security and Medicare, subsidize oil companies, outlaw abortion, etc.) are so repellent to most Americans. (emphasis added)

I do not recall seeing of this kind of sharp criticism of SM or MAGA's heavy reliance on dark free speech, but it must exist out there somewhere. Between the WaPo caving in to DJT and MAGA bullshit a few days before the election and now Zuckerberg caving in, it seems that a new awareness of the reality of both SM and DFS is starting to sink in to a wider audience. 

The question is, too little, and/or too late? I don't know.

Or, maybe I overstate what seems to be going on here. I do tend to be an early critic when I see nascent threats.