The problem isn't with social media, it's with the business models of Facebook, Twitter, etc. Social media is a great way to keep in touch with people. What isn

The problem isn't with social media, it's with the business models of Facebook, Twitter, etc. Social media is a great way to keep in touch with people. What isn't great is the constant interruptive notifications, ads all over your feed, ceaseless exposure to brands and people and posts you don't want to see because all of this stuff is known to increase "stickiness" and thus deliver a larger section of your time to advertisers. Even when the experience is literally driving the brains behind those eyeballs to depression. What if instead someone had created a social graph protocol and put it out there as an open thing for anyone to use? Like TCP/IP, or HTTP, or email. Perhaps we wouldn't have these problems today. But the VC model saw an opportunity, moved in with huge amounts of money, colonized the space as fast as they could, and now work hard to pull as much cash out of it as possible. Just like a factory that dumps sludge into the river, they'll be happy to dump sludge into your eyeballs until they get pushback from consumers, regulators, or both. Mastodon, GNU Social et. al. don't have this problem.