Nothing is less nonpartisan than a social media platform run by politicized CEOs. Yet social media platforms are precisely that: defined by their politics whether they be Facebook, Twitter, Parler or Gab. They are not ‘social media’ vehicles full of pictures of families having picnics or singing round campfires. They are places where activists call for the evisceration of their opponents. Nothing weiners and marshmallows about them.
Ask yourself: why is the telephone system not inflammatory? How come email never produced this incendiary effect. Perhaps the answer lies in how they differ from social media:
- they carry all messages regardless of content;
- the messages they convey are addressed to specific recipients. They are not broadcast media.
That’s why neither the telephone nor email stoked up the fires of unrest. By contrast social media is sent out into universe. Despite it’s refusal to call itself an edited platform it is full of algorithmic secret panels, alligator pits, rotating bookcases and trapdoors to snag the unwary. What we call social media is a broadcast platform, run by editors; nay by political activists.