Thoughts on Social Media
....and the Platform that’s Getting It Right
Before moving over to Substack, I had already grown deeply skeptical about the major social media platforms and the grip they exert over public discourse. Like many others, I was spending less time on Meta, YouTube, and Twitter—not just because of the noise and the chaos, but because I began to seriously question the values and incentives driving these companies. Eventually, I decided to take a closer look. I set out to examine the “big three” and document what each platform was doing that made me want to stay away.
Meanwhile, nine months into using Substack, I’ve come to appreciate how different it feels. There’s an intentionality to the platform—a sense that it’s designed for people who value thoughtfulness over virality. I count myself lucky to have made the switch when I did. I’m not a social media power user; I didn’t have thousands of followers or a personal brand to maintain. That made it easier to step away. And the more I’ve looked back at the big platforms I left behind, the more convinced I am that I made the right choice. I see them now as not just flawed, but pernicious.
This post focuses on Meta, YouTube, and Twitter—three platforms that dominate how people consume and interpret the world. It doesn’t even touch on TikTok, which deserves its own reckoning. Just look at how quickly the CCP was able to flood that platform with propaganda after the U.S.–China tariff war began. TikTok, in many ways, is the sound you hear just before a bomb goes off. But for now, let’s stick with the “American” three—and take a hard look at what they’ve become.
Meta:
In April 2025, a former senior Meta executive, Sarah Wynn-Williams, testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, delivering serious allegations against her former employer. She claimed that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been so determined to gain access to China’s vast market that he was willing to offer the Chinese Communist Party access to the personal data of U.S. citizens. This campaign, known internally as “Project Aldrin,” was kept highly secret and limited to a small group of staff on a need-to-know basis.
According to Wynn-Williams, the effort included constructing a physical data pipeline—a reference to a planned undersea cable between Los Angeles and Hong Kong that was ultimately rerouted due to national security concerns. She testified that Meta’s leadership disregarded warnings that this infrastructure could allow Chinese authorities to intercept U.S. user data. The only reason the pipeline did not become a vulnerability, she said, was because Congress intervened.
Though Meta has publicly denied operating its services in China, Wynn-Williams pointed out that the company has quietly conducted significant business in the country. She noted that Meta’s own SEC filings show China is now its second largest market. While the company does not directly provide social media services in China, it does earn substantial revenue from Chinese advertisers and developers. This nuance, Wynn-Williams argued, reveals a disingenuous attempt to downplay Meta’s financial entanglement with China.
She also raised alarms about the national security implications of Meta’s open-source artificial intelligence models, particularly LLaMA, which she said have been used by Chinese firms like DeepSeek and may support military applications. Moreover, she alleged that Meta worked with Chinese authorities to develop censorship tools—then misled the public about this collaboration.
In response, Meta dismissed her testimony as false and detached from reality. Still, her revelations drew support from several senators. Senator Josh Hawley accused Meta of going to extreme lengths to prevent her from testifying, including threatening her with $50,000 in punitive damages for each public mention of the company. Senator Dick Durbin compared Meta’s behavior to that of the tobacco industry, accusing it of concealing harmful practices while profiting from them. Other senators, including Chuck Grassley and Richard Blumenthal, commended Wynn-Williams for her courage and highlighted the need for stronger whistleblower protections, particularly for those exposing misconduct in the tech and AI sectors.
Wynn-Williams has since filed whistleblower complaints with the SEC and the Department of Justice and faces a potentially ruinous legal battle with the company. Her memoir, Careless People, chronicles her nearly seven-year tenure at Meta and includes further insights into its internal culture and strategic decisions.
This testimony follows a pattern of troubling behavior by Meta in recent years. A 2020 antitrust report from the Omidyar Network outlined how Meta (then Facebook) systematically acquired emerging competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralize threats to its dominance. The report also accused Meta of exclusionary tactics, such as denying competitors access to essential APIs, and of misleading users about its privacy practices. These actions, the report argued, have stifled innovation and harmed consumers.
Further compounding Meta’s credibility issues are its actions during the 2016 U.S. election. Between 2015 and 2017, Facebook accepted roughly $100,000 in political ads paid for in Russian rubles by the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked operation. These ads were designed to stir division across American society and were targeted at voters based on race, religion, and political affiliation. Facebook later admitted that accepting ruble payments should have been an obvious warning sign, but its automated ad-buying platform at the time lacked safeguards to prevent foreign interference.
In all, the allegations paint a picture of a company that has repeatedly prioritized market expansion and profit over ethical responsibility and national security. Whether in China, Russia, or the broader global market, Meta’s pursuit of dominance appears to have come at significant cost to democratic institutions, consumer privacy, and geopolitical stability.
YouTube:
YouTube, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (Google), has faced mounting scrutiny for allegedly censoring content critical of China’s Communist Party. In 2020, users noticed that comments using terms like “communist bandit” and “50-cent party” (a slur for pro-regime internet trolls) were being automatically deleted. YouTube attributed the deletions to an “error” in its moderation system and claimed it was not a deliberate policy change. However, this explanation drew skepticism given the geopolitical sensitivity of the content.
More recently, prominent YouTubers Matthew Tye and Winston Sterzel, who built their careers documenting life in China, have alleged targeted suppression by YouTube after they began criticizing the CCP. Following the U.S. election in 2024, their channels saw a drastic drop—over 70%—in viewership despite no change in content format. Other CCP-critical channels like China Uncensored reported similar declines. Meanwhile, videos with misleading, seemingly pro-China and anti-American titles performed significantly better, suggesting a shift in YouTube's algorithm that penalizes criticism of China while rewarding favorable narratives.
Their investigations revealed further concerns: when searching for China-related content using incognito mode, CCP-friendly content—often from low-viewership accounts—was prioritized over long-established, popular channels critical of Beijing. This suggests algorithmic bias, possibly influenced by external pressure.
Supporting this claim, a 2023 Guardian report confirmed Google removed hundreds of YouTube videos at the request of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security—many involving allegations of political corruption. Independent research has also identified coordinated pro-CCP influence campaigns operating on YouTube despite the platform being banned in China.
These developments raise serious questions about YouTube’s transparency, susceptibility to foreign influence, and its role in shaping global political narratives—often at the expense of free expression and truth.
Twitter:
Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now known as X) in October 2022, the platform has undergone a radical transformation that has drawn sharp criticism from experts, users, regulators, and even government officials. Much of the controversy has centered around changes to content moderation, verification systems, business operations, platform reliability, and Musk’s political influence—both domestic and international.
One of the most immediate and widely criticized changes under Musk’s leadership was a significant loosening of content moderation policies. He dissolved Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council and slashed moderation teams, reinstating previously banned accounts such as Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, and Alex Jones. Watchdog groups and researchers have since documented spikes in hate speech, misinformation, and harassment. This includes disinformation related to elections, the Israel-Gaza war, and vaccine safety, raising alarms about the platform’s role in spreading harmful narratives.
Verification, once a tool for ensuring authenticity, also became chaotic under Musk. With the rollout of the pay-for-verification system (Twitter Blue/X Premium), users could buy blue checks regardless of identity, resulting in impersonations of public figures and companies. One notable example involved a fake Eli Lilly account that tweeted insulin would be free, tanking the company's stock briefly. The credibility of the blue checkmark has since been largely eroded.
Internally, Musk’s decisions led to mass layoffs, cutting over 70% of Twitter’s workforce, including crucial engineering and safety teams. These moves coincided with a sharp decline in ad revenue, as brands feared for their reputations in an increasingly unpredictable environment. Technical issues and service outages have become more frequent, and major changes to algorithms and policies often come without notice or transparency.
Politically, Musk has drawn fire for fostering a platform perceived to favor far-right voices, suspending critical journalists, and labeling respected outlets like NPR and the BBC as “state-affiliated.” His defense of “free speech absolutism” has alienated many longtime users and observers.
Musk’s rebranding of Twitter to “X” further baffled users, abandoning the globally recognized Twitter name and logo for a vague new vision of an “everything app”—a concept modeled after China’s WeChat that has yet to materialize in any meaningful way.
Perhaps most concerning are Musk’s entanglements in global geopolitics, particularly during the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography revealed that Musk had direct communication with senior Russian officials, and reportedly acted to restrict Ukraine’s use of the Starlink satellite service near Crimea during a military operation, allegedly to avoid provoking a nuclear response. Though Musk later disputed aspects of this account, the revelations raised serious concerns about his unilateral influence over national security decisions. U.S. officials, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, called for investigations into Musk’s outsized control over critical infrastructure.
Further complicating matters are claims that Musk has amplified pro-Russian narratives on X, both by allowing banned Kremlin-linked accounts back onto the platform and by personally engaging with or sharing content from controversial commentators. While no confirmed direct communication with Vladimir Putin has been publicly verified, the implications of Musk’s contact with Russian officials during wartime have spurred widespread debate over the limits of private power in public geopolitics.
In summary, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter/X has catalyzed a wave of concerns about the platform’s role in democratic discourse, global conflict, and technological stability. His unorthodox leadership style, sweeping decisions, and growing influence over both digital speech and international infrastructure continue to attract scrutiny from all corners of the political and technological spheres.
In an age when the public’s trust has become a casualty of algorithmic manipulation, platform overreach, and opaque moderation policies, Meta, YouTube, and Twitter (now X) stand as cautionary tales. These tech giants, once heralded as gateways to open dialogue and digital community, have instead become engines of misinformation, surveillance, and ideological distortion. Whether through selectively enforced policies, profit-driven data exploitation, or the suppression of independent journalism, they have repeatedly shown a willingness to compromise user well-being in service of their own power. Substack, by contrast, has chosen a different path—one rooted in simplicity, transparency, and a principled respect for both writers and readers. While no platform is perfect, Substack’s decentralized, subscription-based model offers a refreshing antidote to the noise and manipulation that define much of the modern social web. It honors the public’s trust not by courting virality, but by fostering clarity and intention. And in this moment, that alone feels revolutionary.
Notes:
Iain Thomson, Ex-Meta exec tells Senate Zuck dangled US citizen data in bid to enter China, Former policy boss claims Facebook cared little about national security as it chased the mighty Yuan, The Register, April 11, 2025, https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/11/meta_senate_china/
Facebook says it sold $100,000 in ads to fake Russian accounts during presidential election, ABC News, September 6, 2017
David McCabe, U.S. Argues Google Created Ad Tech Monopoly, April 17, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/09/technology/google-antitrust-ad-technology.html
Mark Bergen, YouTube Deletes Comments Critical of China’s Communist Party, May 27, 2020, Yahoo News
Matthew Tye, Why is YouTube boosting anti-US, pro-Chinese communist propaganda? Opinion Contributor - 02/21/25, https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5155350-youtube-promoting-pro-china/
Mattia Fontana, From Tweets to Threats: How Musk’s X Fuels Disinformation and Undermines Democracy, August 28, 2024, https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/from-tweets-to-threats-how-musk-s-x-fuels-disinformation-and-undermines?lang=fr
[The writer is not paid or otherwise incentivized by Substack.]