Facebook/Meta

 Facebook has certainly become a popular whipping boy these days. And I have had issues with FB, primarily with the tortured use of "community standards" by the right-leaning moderators who punish those of us who dare criticize the right-wing extremists in government and society. And FB has only recently started cracking down on anti-vax disinformation and on Trump and others who advocate overturning election results.

For me personally, mostly FB has been a good thing. I've met new people on FB and keep in touch with friends. I enjoy seeing pictures and funny memes that people share. And even being blocked by those right-wing moderators had a positive dividend: it forced me to start my own blog. FB isn't a source of evil, it is an amplifier of the evil that already exists in American culture. Here's Kevin Drum: " . . . the bulk of the (limited) evidence to date suggests that social media doesn't cause hostility, it merely reflects hostility that's always been there but that most of us never noticed.

"Now, I think you can still argue that there's a second order effect here: Merely being exposed to so much more hostility may have a negative effect on society. I'm open to that idea. However, is there really any question that the intense political hostility we face today started way back in 2000, or perhaps 2010 at the absolute latest? And therefore something else has to be at the root of it, with social media playing, at most, a modest supporting role in later years?" https://jabberwocking.com/facebook-is-a-reflection-of-society-not-an-agitator/