Replace 'Social' with 'Marketing' and it starts to make sense.
Social media markets itself merely as a way to connect, but under the hood, it’s a sophisticated marketing engine designed to make us both the buyers and what’s being sold. You're being sold, and every time you change your mind because of an ad or meme you saw, you're buying yourself. It's ingenious, and it's kind of crazy. It's less like Social Media and more like Marketing Media. Facebook isn't worth two trillion dollars because half the world paid to use their platform. How much have you paid to use Facebook? So if nobody is paying to use Facebook, how did they become so valuable? Answer: It has a lot of valuable products to sell, and you are the product! Your family and friends? They're all products, too.
During the ’80s and ’90s, I operated a BBS 
, one of the first online communities that connected people with computers through phone lines and modems (before the Internet existed). It fostered sincere communication, unlike the profit-focused algorithms that now dominate social media, controlling and influencing how we think and feel. Since leaving social media in 2010, I’ve seen these manipulative systems grow even more potent.
I don’t miss the constant phone-checking or the endless parade of curated ‘perfect lives.’ Knowing most of those polished portrayals are illusions was both discouraging and reassuring: discouraging because it confirmed my cynicism, and reassuring because it grounded me in the reality of my own happily average life. Watching 'influencers' perform their dog and pony shows today, I found myself quite amused and a bit exasperated, knowing how hollow and insincere much of it is. They remind me of the creepy product placements in The Truman Show . They thrive today because most social media users, long subjected to profit-focused, behavior-shaping algorithms, have never experienced the authentic, volunteer-run communities that once blossomed purely from a love of communication ~ the love of connecting with other people authentically ~ the kind we computer enthusiasts of the ’80s and ’90s experienced. If they had of experienced the original form of online communities, influencers would likely not be able to survive today, because most would see through their methods.
What appears to others as connection feels, to me, like compromise. My choice to step away from social media isn’t a rejection of family, friends, or future friendships — it’s a rejection of the Manufactured Marketing Matrix behind it.
But since most people do choose to use social media, if you’d like to boost your privacy and security while doing so, I’ve put together a page of helpful Social Media Privacy & Security Tips you can check out.
