How Social Media Are Destroying Alternative News — And Why They’re No Longer Social Media At All

Right now, a massive conversation has been launched about the value and danger of social media. Most of that conversation has centered around two specific problems: the first is privacy; the second is manipulation.

The first problem is the most obvious, and the most broadly concerning to the most people. People are worried that companies like Facebook and Google have been using all their data for purposes of profit-making or marketing, that they’ve been packaging that data to third parties or allowing third parties to grab that data without user permission, that the searches they’ve been entering with the assumption of anonymity aren’t anonymous in the slightest.