Certainly this might be a design goal of some social media apps, but IMO it definitionally cannot ever really be achieved. The software will put (some hard, some soft) limits on the kinds of things that will be posted, and the kinds of posts that will be seen. These choices will affect the emotional tenor of the experience of using it in a very directly McLuhan-y way.

The closest thing we have to a neutral "common carrier" in social media -- if we stretch the definition of social media -- is probably email, but even the choices made there over its decades-long rollout have emotional consequences. Furthermore, the emotional content of checking my inbox on my phone in the waiting room at the tire shop is different than blasting through it with mutt on my Ubuntu desktop, and is different again when I log into my webmail quick on my parents' elderly Dell desktop.

IMO if we try to pretend that there is a clear separation between the medium and the message, then in using these apps we open ourselves up to an even deeper level of emotional manipulation than using them with that truth in mind.

> The software will put (some hard, some soft) limits on the kinds of things that will be posted, and the kinds of posts that will be seen. These choices will affect the emotional tenor of the experience of using it in a very directly McLuhan-y way.

True. Being neutral is a nice goal, but unachievable. Every choice has a color, some dull, some bright, but colored nonetheless.