> But the point of this thought experiment is not "if all social media vanished, we would be totally unaffected" — that's obviously not true. This all started

> But the point of this thought experiment is not "if all social media vanished, we would be totally unaffected" — that's obviously not true. This all started with: > "Even if every single social network vanished tomorrow, we would still have a space where anyone can say whatever they want and instantly distribute it to every corner of the Earth" I'm glad for the clarification. I think what confuses this is continuing to make claims like: > Sharing a tweet in a blog post or an email is not fundamentally different than doing it with another tweet. The goal is human interaction, not a particular set of features. The difference is in the outcome, and can be summed up with one word: reach. And I agree, human interaction is the goal. Features are just things that help humans achieve that goal. But features also modulate what is possible, and how effectively that goal will be reached. Features matter insomuch as they enable outcomes, and not all outcomes are equal across the various ways you could imagine a set of features. If you believe that publicly sharing a tweet on a platform filled with people who are there to read other tweets - is not different than me sending you a personal email, I don't think there's any way for us to get on the same page. And I guess I don't understand the point of what you're arguing at this point, because while sure, the Internet continues to exist, it would seem odd to say something like: "Well, the town got blown away by a tornado, but reality still exists, so nothing has really changed". At this point let's just agree to disagree and move on, since I don't think we're really arguing about the same things.