Social media and its discontents; plus, Trump’s war against the press, and the Globe’s latest Steward stunner

Almost from the beginning of the social-media age, I’ve been too deeply immersed for my own good. So I appreciated this recent essay (gift link) in The New York Times Magazine by J Worthen, who tells us that Bluesky might look like the better, kinder place at the moment but that it’s probably destined to turn into a vortex of sociopathy like all the rest. Here’s the nut:

We have officially arrived in late-stage social media. The services and platforms that delighted us and reshaped our lives when they began appearing a few decades ago have now reached total saturation and maturation. Call it malaise. Call it Stockholm syndrome. Call it whatever. But each time a new platform debuts, promising something better — to help us connect better, share photos better, manage our lives better — many of us enthusiastically trek on over, only to be disappointed in the end.

As someone who used to get into fights on Usenet back in the 1990s (look it up), long before anyone had ever thought of using algorithms to drive content that engages and enrages, I agree that it’s hopeless. Bluesky might prove to be the exception. Among other things, you get to choose your own algorithm, or none at all. But it really doesn’t matter. The real problem is that, no, you can’t have meaningful conversations with strangers, and social media is inimical to the way we’ve evolved.

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The post-Musk social-media landscape has also been defined by the incredibly annoying practice of platform-shaming — a hopeless chase after the least-evil alternative, accompanied by bitter criticism of anyone who would dare keep using those platforms that are deemed insufficiently free of harmful entanglements.

Under this hierarchy, Twitter/X is the worst, followed by Substack, initially spurned for its refusal to deplatform neo-Nazi content (gift link) and now under attack again for its just-announced partnership with Bari Weiss, a prominent conservative journalist who’s built a publication called The Free Press on Substack.

For a while, some Threads adopters inveighed against those who refused to leave Twitter. That seems to have calmed down following Bluesky’s recent explosive growth. It struck me from the start that using your Threads account to shame Twitter users was kind of, well, odd given that Threads is part of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta empire, implicated in genocide among other things.

Under our capitalist system, there really isn’t that much you can do if you want to reach an audience that extends beyond a few like-minded people. These days I’m mostly using Bluesky and Threads, with occasional forays over to Twitter. I like Substack’s publishing tools, and if I didn’t have so many years sunk into WordPress, I’d consider moving Media Nation over there. I mean, if it’s good enough for Heather Cox Richardson, Margaret Sullivan and Paul Krugman, who am I to cop a holier-than-thou attitude?

Not that WordPress is entirely exempt from the platform wars, either. Long seen as the paradigm for independent self-publishing, WordPress several months ago got caught up in an ugly fight between its wealthy founder and a company that provides support services to WordPress users.

I’m not sure how that one turned out. My point is that there is no refuge. No, I’m not suggesting that you set up an account on 4chan or Truth Social. But if you like to use social media, my recommendation is to do what makes sense for you.

Trump’s anti-media crusade

Donald Trump has continued his crusade against the media with a deeply stupid lawsuit claiming that The Des Moines Register and now-retired pollster Ann Selzer engaged in consumer fraud because of a poll published days before Election Day showing that Kamala Harris was ahead by 3% in Iowa.

That finding was an extreme outlier in the deeply red state, and it excited Harris supporters given Selzer’s sterling reputation. In fact, though, Trump won Iowa by 13%. Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told CNN:

This absurd lawsuit is a direct assault on the First Amendment. Newspapers and polling firms are not engaged in “deceptive practices” just because they publish stories and poll results President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t like. Getting a poll wrong is not election interference or fraud.

Given that Trump has said publicly that he intends to do whatever he can to torment news organizations, Josh Marshall, the founder and editor-in-chief of the liberal outlet Talking Points Memo, is calling for the establishment of a defense fund. He writes:

To make something like this work you need first-rate legal chops. You also need a big pile of money. You need lots of small donors and you need high rollers writing big checks. There’s a lot of appetite for defending people on the enemies list. There’s even more appetite for embarrassing and wrong-footing this bully degenerate. People like to win. They like to see examples that the good guys aren’t powerless.

In the meantime, you might consider taking out a digital subscription to The Des Moines Register, which I’m going to do right after I publish this. The Register is part of Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain as well as the owner of USA Today, so the stakes here are much bigger than the fate of one medium-size newspaper. Gannett is notorious for slashing its newsrooms, but the company also has a decent reputation for standing up on First Amendment issues. Let’s hope that continues.

Finally, the New York Post wants you to know that George Stephanopoulos is “apoplectic,” “humiliated” and “defiant” over Disney’s decision to settle Trump’s libel suit against ABC News and Stephanopoulos for $16 million. Stephanopoulos said repeatedly on air that a jury found that Trump had “raped” the writer E. Jean Carroll — technically inaccurate but nevertheless backed up by a federal judge who ruled that was exactly what the jury had found if one relies on everyday English rather than legal terminology.

As I wrote earlier this week: Stephanopoulos could have resigned and continued to fight the suit. By failing to take that route, he is complicit in his own embarrassment.

Healey’s Steward problem

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has a problem following The Boston Globe Spotlight Team’s lengthy exploration of how the political establishment enabled Steward Health Care, the now-bankrupt private hospital chain that hollowed out its medical facilities in order to enrich its executives. Former CEO Ralph de la Torre is now the subject of a federal investigation.

According to the Globe’s reporting, Healey had gone soft on Steward for years, both as attorney general and now as governor. Her administration sought the reinstatement of a politically connected nurse who was fired after a possibly avoidable death took place on her watch (plausibly, Healey now says she regarded the nurse as a whistleblower), and Healey and other politicians accepted generous campaign contributions from Steward even as they played down the chain’s numerous problems.

Going back many months, the Globe has done an outstanding job of holding Steward and de la Torre to account. But the role of Beacon Hill in letting this nightmare unfold needs to be examined as well. The Spotlight article is a good start.