The government have the powers to stop social media

This site is also social media. If everything is turned off you lose a means to communicate.

People may choose what they look at. You can choose not to engage. 

What it exposes is some people's true nature. 

Anonymity and distance are both a help and a hindrance.

This site is also social media. If everything is turned off you lose a means to communicate.

People may choose what they look at. You can choose not to engage. 

What it exposes is some people's true nature. 

Anonymity and distance are both a help and a hindrance.

I'd certainly like to see to see the social media better policed and these huge corporations held to account for some of the harm they cause or allow, for example I can't find a reasonable argument for child porn, for threats of exteme violence and hatred against politicians you disagree with. There's all sort of nastiness out there and it seems increasingly aimed at the young and vulnerable.

The only social media I use is here, that is my choice, I have tried or looked at other sites and I either don't like them, can't be bothered with them or find them to difficult to use. Going on to a page and instantly getting hassled by a chat bot wanting to help me, annoys the hell out of me too.

It is possible to have the internet and not use social media, although it's becoming harder as everything wants to integrate with everything else. I'm also finding the internet becoming harder to use generally, the amount of pop up's and data protection stuff that stops you even looking at a site, why can't they all have a deny all cookies option? I'ts one of the reasons I've stopped even looking at a lot of stuff. I also dislike the sort of corporate takeover or so many sites and search engines, all the sponsered ads then two or three examples of things that fit my search criteria, then more crap I didn't ask for. Or as I found when looking for a new cat scratching tree, a whole page of stuff about caring for your kitten, no cat scratching trees.

But as Stuart and others have pointed out, we have a choice about what we use, how much and when, I chose not to use social media apart from here, or messaging apps and there are certain sites I refuse to use and I'm finding the internet more and more limited in its options, or for the things I want to use it for anyway.