"Until we find them, however, it’s probably better for us to delete the ones we use today."
This is a really dangerous, reactionary notion. If there's something inherent in our social formations that are translating themselves into our public spaces and we are unhappy with, let's work to change them together. This is a thoughtful piece and I think there are great reasons to delete your posts from long ago because, well, people change! Other commenters here have made good supporting arguments for this.
But we must be very, very careful not to demonize tools where their users need to be taken into consideration: unless there is something specific about facebook, unique among other social networks, that is toxic (this may be the case!) then we need to be wary of these arguments because they are very easy to apply to all social media which, imo, is a copout.
Why is it a dangerous notion? For the sake of argument, if everyone went completely over the top and deleted all their social media accounts, the world would go back to looking like it did around 2006. A few corporations would go broke. A few other corporations values would increase. Mass psy-ops would become more difficult and expensive.
So in the extreme case that you're talking about it's not dangerous in any way I can think of at the moment. One of the big reasons I called it dangerous was that the effect only a portion of the users leaving the platform is dangerous and more subtle. To my eye, it's a social critique which leads to people who agree with it voluntarily removing themselves from the 21st century version of the "public square." I worry that this leads to disenfranchisement on their part as I've seen such isolation result in those feelings.
I guess the spirit of my claim is that the shape of group conversation will always come to resemble the cultural context of that conversation, regardless of the medium. While the medium can and should be critiqued, calling for total abstention from the medium is effectively self-censorship and I don't think that'll lead to the desired result.
This is a really dangerous, reactionary notion. If there's something inherent in our social formations that are translating themselves into our public spaces and we are unhappy with, let's work to change them together. This is a thoughtful piece and I think there are great reasons to delete your posts from long ago because, well, people change! Other commenters here have made good supporting arguments for this.
But we must be very, very careful not to demonize tools where their users need to be taken into consideration: unless there is something specific about facebook, unique among other social networks, that is toxic (this may be the case!) then we need to be wary of these arguments because they are very easy to apply to all social media which, imo, is a copout.