Not OP, but IMHO, the danger comes from the algorithms which lead to "engaging" content being pushed aggressively to everyone. "Engaging" can mean cat videos or "incredible looking food", but it means divisive, partisan, insincere and outright dangerous more often than not.

Inasmuch as a "social network" is just people signing up to talk about certain topics and that's it, I don't have a problem with it. Internet forums of the 2000s weren't a problem necessarily. And while HN does have some "virality" mechanisms built in due to upvoting and while it is sometimes a "problem" on very divisive topics, it's not nearly on the scale of Facebook, Twitter and Co.

So if it were up to me, Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok etc. should either disappear or they should at least have to revise their algorithms and open them up to public scrutiny. Or, you know, if they went back to their original purpose of just being about connecting with friends and family. But I guess you can't make money out of that.

I take your point. But I would need more convincing that just getting rid of algorithms/recommendations/etc. would suddenly make all the problems go away.

All? No. Conspiracy theories and disinformation existed before the internet, too.

But we can at least try to get rid of the things that make the problem worse.

Moreover, minimising hyper-addictive patterns on such platforms would have a host of other benefits too.

Another part of the problem is size. Older communities were miniscule compared to the billions of users each platform has now.

While I agree that it's a sticky problem, I think we can find a middle ground between "email mailing list" and "site dedicated to maximizing engagement by both encouraging the spread of rage baiting misinformation and deliberately maximizing the number of people who see it".

Yep, this is my point summed up pretty well. SMS can be seen as a "social network" if you really squint your eyes - clearly I'm not talking about BBS/forum software/etc.