My new year’s resolution? To detoxify my social media

Over the next year, one of Dave MacLean’s resolutions is to use Indy100 to help highlight some of the places that fulfill the promise of the early internet

The sadness of the current situation is that the early internet held so much promise (Reuters)

Social media is designed for conflict. Anger is engagement, and engagement is money. And that ecosystem has elevated some people from being mere annoyances to main characters. There are TV presenters and newspaper columnists who could once easily be ignored by switching channels or closing the newspaper.

But now they fill our Twitter feeds even if we don’t follow them, having figured out that tapping out a low-value controversial take will boost their profile for a few more days and lead to a couple of additional panel show bookings.

I’m editor of Indy100 in the US, and our site’s focus is on internet culture. As well as the established names who’ve pivoted to exploiting social media’s outrage network, there’s an entire new generation of internet-made provocateurs who’ve gamed the algorithms and their readers’ dopamine receptors to make it big.