I recently heard critique of Guardian & Co. dropping Shitter. The critique goes roughly as follows: If civic discourse is on platforms, you should not leave that platform as it tips - in this case to the right conspiratorial crypto extreme - as you will leave the people so to say 'alone' with the shifted perception of reality.
In short: wouldn't it be so much better if society had a place where all views come together and exchange.
And I have to say: yes, that would be really good.
But then you're missing two little details:
1️⃣ You're simply ignoring what Shitter has become under Musk, and
2️⃣ that even before Musk Shitter never was that civic marketplace of ideas. It never operated as such.
So, the argument is moot. Yes, there must be some sort of shared reality for a society.
While the first option *clearly is the way worse option*, I don't find the second very compelling either.
The picture brought forward often is that of the ancient Agora of Athens. And maybe the concept of ad-driven social media is so compelling because the Agora was initially simply the market place.
But even then, the picture ignores how differently social media (even the non-ad-driven Fediverse) works from personal human interaction.
Social media is more like a conference hotel with randomly shuffled together working groups in separate rooms and a depending on ads or no ads:
* either a weird conference committee inciting arguments and paid by amount of broken furniture
* or pretty much no conference committee at all.