It's interesting that that Pew research cites TikTok, and Xitter, and presumably other corporate social media. And yet does not mention non-corporate social media, such as this platform.

social-media AS IT CURRENTLY IS OPERATED is harmful to civilrights & democracy.

In no way does as-it-currently-is-operated by Meta et al, have to be the way it always & forever is operated, obviously.

Same as the pseudojournalism is undermining civilrights & democracy, hand-in-hand with that, and actual-journalism is possible, in spite of incumbent-interests having highjacked the "journalism" institutions so completely.

Alternative is possible.

Our fediverse is step in the right direction, it just isn't systematic or clouty-and-ruthless-integrity enough, yet..

🙏

Social media is democratization of the media. People who say social media is bad for democracy are saying something almost oxymoronic: that democratization of the media is bad for democracy.

It's like blaming the gun for killing people instead of the person doing the shooting.

From my perspective, it's the nefarious groups like Russia, the US, and certain corporations. Including Musk and others that are spamming social media with discordant media and troll bots.

We had message boards back in the day that were pretty much social media before it existed. The internet was just fine at the time.