> In all the years of human history before social media, there have been countless examples of insurrections, of hateful acts inspired by a few, of coups, of ro

> In all the years of human history before social media, there have been countless examples of insurrections, of hateful acts inspired by a few, of coups, of routine crimes, of widely believed mistruths, etc. So obviously individuals in those societies were able to communicate and organize without social media (and in many cases without any electronic communication at all). Which means that access to social media is not a necessary condition for bad events to happen or bad social phenomena to spread. And therefore these things will find a way to continue to happen even if all social media communication were terminated. Not to the same extent. (Your argument offers a false dichotomy.) With terrorism, insurrections, and so on (coordinated crimes in general), being able to slow down, monitor, and respond to communication flows can make the difference between a tragedy and an intervention. The idea of 'slowing things down' can also apply to any information source, such as business news or the political rumor-mill. Do you want recent, vetted, and contextualized information? In practice, pick two.