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I don't reject social medias but...


...I'm increasingly suspicious of them, as I am of everything that the big internet companies tend to impose on us. I'm not questioning the historic revolution that they have enabled by offering everyone platforms for expression and exchange that are unprecedented and free. What I am criticising is the direction that these platforms are taking towards an increasingly manipulative tendency (notably through the control of algorithmic recommendations, but also through the laxity of their moderation policy, which fails to eradicate the spread of hate content and fake news).

But even on a supposedly more harmless level, social medias are dangerous for our mental health, particularly with the addictive and damaging gratification they provide when our published content is liked and commented on. More generally, the principle of the quest for online popularity through the quest for the greatest number of views, likes and followers, but also through the omnipresent ratings (number of stars) for any of our interactions, is gradually building a virtual society based on digital reputation, without us having the means to control the relevance and accuracy of all these micro-judgements. It is not improbable to think that in the not too distant future our lives will be professionally, economically and perhaps judicially conditioned mainly by our virtual identity, made up of an enormous quantity of data collected about us without our consent. Moreover, the engineers who are building these structures combining big data and artificial intelligence themselves recognise that they do not have the power to control what is actually going on in these processes, nor do they have the means to prevent us from all the possible dangers.

But choosing to distance ourselves from social medias (as I do) can also be a risk of digital invisibilisation, so I couldn't say with any certainty what we should do, apart from always being vigilant about what the big platforms want us to adopt and continuing to cultivate alternative and personal means of communication that escape their invasive logic. (This is what I try to do, for example, with my website, which I code myself and which does not collect any data.)