"One of the more useful frameworks for what is happening today is rumors: people are spreading information that can maybe never be verified or falsified, within communities of people who really care about an issue."

This is a problem most perpetrated by females and their low-T CNN male counterparts.

"Boys’ antisocial behavior is overt; violence, theft, aggression, etc. For girls antisocial behavior takes the form of gossip, innuendo, reputation destruction, and back-biting. Social media facilitates this form of aggression. Indirect aggression scales online in a way that direct aggression does not. Penalties of overt aggression are clear; but you can more easily get away with covert aggression. Girls are now subject to bullying by their peers in a way they never have before. [You can’t punch a thousand people in the face at the same time, but you can get a thousand people to hate a single person overnight]."

Maybe we should just honor more "toxic masculinity" as a more productive way to settle differences?

Frankly I really don't think it is the general users of the social media platforms that are the worry... it is the institutions that exploit the divisive power of the platform for their own selfish ends, or that jettison real moral principles bending to a mob threat that might result in an immediate popularity hit.

And can we just admit that the algorithms are eating brains?

I love the dichotomy of left brained demand that we censor misinformation while also screaming opposition to banning TikTok... even though the left's Chinese communist comrades restrict the time and content of Chinese users to be limited and educational.