So Kathleen and I have been talking bout things, and it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the best solution for social media would be to delete all of it. Personally, I’ve sort of had distinct phases of interaction with social media — in high school and undergrad (the early days of FB), facebook was still mostly the students-only, friends-as-people-you-know world, where it was really useful for getting the word out on events and sharing photos, etc. and hadn’t been bombarded with advertising or excessive algorithms or otherwise monetized devices (at least that’s my recollection). After school, social media became part of my job description (literally, at Elsewhere), and I was almost on the other side of things, trying to capitalize on the value of those relationships, obsessing over metrics, etc. Now I barely participate and recognize that omitting myself doesn’t solve any problems, just because “deactivation is the opposite of activism” doesn’t necessarily mean that staying active is activism, either. Activism is activism. So,
1 – somehow tax social media, like cigarettes. fund critical print/web operations
2 – yes definitely bring back some trust-busting, all around
3 – no more algorithmic timelines, go chronological.
4 – removing ads would be nice
5 – locals-only networks (in addition to the current global ones) so that IRL communities can get better? i don’t know
6 – reimburse users for data breaches