The question of the day is “Do we need a non-profit public social media platform to clean up the social media environment?”  A social media PBS? I’d say, yes, it’s worth a try.  All social platforms have become toxic of late, so I would appreciate a new social platform that offers a safe space for adults and, in particular, children to connect digitally. 

This kind of platform would work well in a number of ways.  With no pressure to drive platform use, bad actors would be swiftly removed and fake accounts eliminated. True, meaningful conversations would be fostered within a less noisy space, allowing users to truly engage in a kinder, gentler community.  And no organizational accounts would be allowed, ensuring that the messaging is tied to individuals who simply want to share online the things that they most value, not propaganda, sales pitches or positioning. 

A non-profit public social media platform might cause the biggest for-profit social platforms to reconsider their current models, or at least clean them up. The new model would also require that individual users donate to support the platform because no advertising would be allowed.  This kind of platform may drive our nation’s intellectuals to trust in information that is shared on the non-profit public social platform versus the commercial version – particularly around key topics such as health, illness, news, politics and science.  This would lessen the value of sharing information about such topics on the for profit platforms.  Finally, parents would likely mandate that children under a certain age participate only in non-profit social, which would cripple young-leaning platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram.

I don’t believe that this change would negatively impact the social media industry, but redefine it to ensure that individuals have greater and more positive environmental options to utilize.