If it wasn’t Twitter it would be Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, or whatever social network is cool tomorrow.
The social media cat is out of the bag. Mob justice is, unfortunately, the purest form of democracy, untempered by government or constitution or other forms of control. The only paths forward are to live with mob justice or to enforce actions against free speech and expression (ie making it illegal to cancel someone on the institution side, or make it illegal to participate in a social media mob on the user side, or make it illegal to host a social media mob on the social network side). I don’t see those happening.
Social Media is not the purest form of democracy because the people using social media, or who have a lot of followers on social media, are not representative
Mob justice is the purest form of democracy (how do the people organize in a land with no laws? They get pitchforks to oust the Bad People)
Social media is a tool that happens to facilitate mob justice particularly effectively. Why? Because you used to have to gather dozens or hundreds of people in the town common before you could yell “Burn the witch!”. Now you just tweet it (or share it, or telegram it, or…)
The social media cat is out of the bag. Mob justice is, unfortunately, the purest form of democracy, untempered by government or constitution or other forms of control. The only paths forward are to live with mob justice or to enforce actions against free speech and expression (ie making it illegal to cancel someone on the institution side, or make it illegal to participate in a social media mob on the user side, or make it illegal to host a social media mob on the social network side). I don’t see those happening.