I’m not a fan of social media (SM). In an essay I posted here a few months ago, I led with the following words from an interview with computer scientist, Stuart Russell (2021):
ANITA ANAND: I wonder whether you’d go as far as to say that there needs to be a Chernobyl-type event in Al before everyone listens to you?
STUART RUSSELL: Well, I think what’s happening in social media is already worse than Chernobyl. It has caused a huge amount of dislocation.
I don’t suppose SM made us stupid, greedy and mean, but perhaps it did tap into those qualities and exacerbate them exponentially. Mind you, Vilém Flusser (2013) wrote about how stupid we were becoming in 1983:
Our situation is on a level of stupidity as never seen before. Idiotic objects surround us: plastic pens, electric toothbrushes, illustrated magazines, poster adverts, etc. Public discussions in the so-called “free world” can only compete in stupidity and superficiality against the propaganda in the so-called “popular democracies.” If the intellectual level of our codified world was to be submitted to an intelligence test, we would probably verify that its IQ lies somewhere in the scale between idiotism and cretinism (91).
So rather than making us stupid, perhaps SM is an expression of who we are that amplifies and feedbacks too. Which is why when people slate ‘AI’ (a blanket term that covers a vast array of processes), all the while using SM, I cannot help rolling my eyes and wanting to ask, ‘Where on earth have you been the last twenty to thirty years? The damage is already done, and its effects can be seen in SM, not to mention reality TV.’ (In fact, BHAM💥, which is promoted above, was inspired by an essay written in 1956 by Günter Anders which addresses the same theme.)
I am also not a fan of US Big Tech. I have no idea how or even if it is worth trying to avoid using them. Author, Alexander Hurst (2025), suggests trying. He writes in an article addressing the US’s intention to annex – in other words, steal, land grab, colonise – Greenland, even if it entails a military attack:
Europe’s best chance of surviving as a free and open continent in an imperial world is still to force the rupture with the US, force the consequences, and force the federalism anyway. Whatever comes out of the meeting in the White House today, it is time for Europe to tell the US to leave its European military bases, throw off the yoke of US tech billionaires, begin a concerted push to fund public media as a form of informational defence – and maybe even expand the Erasmus programme into a general purpose European civil service corps. Everything short of actual combat should be considered, because “annexing Greenland” is a symptom of American fascism, and others will follow. (My italics).
I have no idea if it’s entirely possible to throw off the yoke of the US tech millionaires. One can, however, make a start. I had, until recently, resigned myself to being tied, no matter how reluctantly, to these companies for good. Aside from the most obvious grievances – manipulation, lack of responsibility towards multiple wars across the globe, ecological harm, amongst others – Meta has long proven to be grotesque. Google’s immediate acquiescence to the US administration, changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, was pathetic. The last few weeks of US-led rampaging and war mongering have brought these concerns to the fore with alacrity.
How to do it? What Hurst recommends? For my browser, I am trying Vivaldi. It was a simple switch from Chrome and is based in Norway. And I was able to transfer all my research bookmarks easily.
Vivaldi has its own Mastodon, on which I currently have two whole followers! I was confused by the decentralised structure of Mastodon a couple of years ago, so not sure that number is going to rise much higher. I’ll give it a go for a few weeks but I don’t think I have the energy, time or inclination to make it work. I’ve suspected for a while that SM, as we knew it once, has had its day. Maybe it doesn’t really matter anymore. Maybe it will have to be fine to simply do without. I will continue to explore the impact of large language models and image generators, so will seek out non-US Big Tech offerings. Euria, a Swiss-based LLM claims only to use renewable energy.
All of that said, Instagram will be the biggest problem, if I want to promote my work: talks I’m giving, articles to be published, new work. Like many others, I have relied on Instagram to network and share projects and my process since 2015. Some time ago, it stopped being pleasant or fun; if it ever was – the obvious exchange mechanism that underpinned ‘growing a following’ always felt horribly instrumental to me. The obsession with doing so, like an illness. I really admire and envy a friend who stopped using Instagram several years ago. I’m just not sure how to resolve that yet.
Hurst’s call for Europe to ‘throw off the yoke of US tech billionaires’ is perhaps idealistic. But given the direction the US is heading and shows no sign of coming back from, I guess one has to start somewhere. My biggest concern, the one I have honed in on in my work, is the acceptance of an anti-intellectualism and the celebration of stupidity that our society seems not only to have embraced but also spread. The questions and the answers are complex and filled with risks and pitfalls. How or if that work will ever find an audience, even the modest one I have only ever aimed for, without relying on US Big Tech remains to be seen.
Refs:
Anders, G. (1956) The obsolescence of man, vol. I, part 2: The world as phantom and as matrix: philosophical considerations on radio and television. Translated by J.M. Pérez. Available at: https://libcom.org/article/obsolescence-man-vol-i-part-2-world-phantom-and-matrix-philosophical-considerations-radio (Accessed: 25 June 2025).
BBC Radio 4 (n.d.) The Reith Lectures: Stuart Russell — Living With Artificial Intelligence. Available at: https://www.bbc.uk/programmes/m001216k (Accessed: 14 January 2026).
Flusser, Vilém (2013), Post-History (eds S. Zielinski and N. Baitello Junior, trans. R. Maltez Novaes), Minneapolis, MN: Univocal Publishing.
Hurst, A. (2026) ‘Europe must now tell Trump that enough is enough – and cut all ties with the US’, The Guardian, 14 January. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/14/europe-trump-democracy-violent-conquest-federalism (Accessed: 14 January 2026).
Additional reading/listening
Should we be transgressive? The limits and potential of transgressiveness
US tech giants allying with European far-right to strip back EU rules