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Social media is an inevitable, unavoidable consequence of the internet
It's almost an emergent property... don't think it quite qualifies as a "mistake". It was bound to happen

I'd personally rank the careless use of plastics for nearly everything conceivable including the most unnecessary stuff higher in our collective mistakes list

I think your response is extremely unimagnative. We had the internet in widespread use for a decade before 'social media' was in widespread use.

Social media of the kind being discussed here-- mass market sites driven by algorithms designed to hack human behaviour and drive "engagement" at any cost-- is may be an inevitable consequence of advertising funded business but I don't believe it is an inevitable consequence of the internet.

Absolutely devoid of content.

"What if social media is bad for us?". Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. This article won't in any way help us think about this.

Same meaningless crap could be said about TV.
How is this fluff at the very top of Hacker News?

Edit: And a few minutes later, it's gone from the front page. I wonder if the author gamed the system somehow?

It's been interesting to watch public sentiment outside of tech.

My personal anecdote is a class mate of mine started at FB and used to wear all their swag and talk it up, slow public sentiment had moved against them and now they say they work in tech or "design users experiences" when asked.

The following comment is almost devoid of content, but still has more content than the article. Social media, and more generally media at a global scale leaves society open to intentional remote manipulation; this is dangerous both in its effects on national security and the choices we make in democratic republics, but also on the values and mores of a culture over time.