this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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It’s really hard to rank them… Facebook is awful for spreading misinformation and it’s echo chamber effect. I give it bonus shit points for being the turning point for social media - it got almost everyone to use it and everything went down here from there. On the positive side it truly brought people together and it was a great tool for sharing your life with friends and family you might not see or speak to regularly. At least to begin with.
YouTube is shit for giving wackos a platform and it’s alt-right pipeline. How many young men have been influenced by Andrew rate type videos? Joe rogan and he’s ilk are straight up cancer. BUT there are tonnes of really really useful tutorials etc that you couldn’t find before.
TikTok is trash for turning people’s brains to mush, pushing the “main character” narrative and encouraging young people to do all kinds of dangerous, stupid shit. But I think it’s fairly benign compared to the others.
Twitter is just a terrible place. Just a toxic, bullying hellhole. Any redeeming qualities (allowing people living under a dictatorship access to news and to broadcast what’s really going on there, for example) have long been lost since Elon arrived to make everyone’s life worse.
The concept of Reddit is better than the others - you can find your own little community dedicated to the most niche interests. It was pretty easy to just lurk and to block people/subs you didn’t want to see, and I think it helped a lot of people. Reddit the company are shit, but aren’t all companies bastards?
Special shout out to Instagram. It’s seems benign on the surface but I’d be a mistake to underestimate the devastating impact it had on young people’s self esteem. The unrealistic body expectations pushed on young people is awful. But it’s the trad wife/evangelical Christian/quiverful type communities which worry me the most. I can’t begin to imagine how many women and babies have died thanks to the no-contraception, home-birth, no vaccine bullshit. It’s not limited to Instagram of course, but it does seem particularly prevalent there.
They’re the only social media sites I’ve used, so based on my experience I’d say worst to best is:
Twitter Instagram Facebook TikTok YouTube Reddit
But honestly they’re all toxic and this was a depressing exercise.