I have said before that I don't agree with the reactionary tendency to blame "social media" for broader issues, especially at this current moment where (particularly in north america and europe) we're being propagandized constantly to allow increasing censorship and surveillance via "common sense" rhetoric about how evil social media is.
with that said, I think it is necessary to understand policing of online public space as a dimension of the policing of public space more broadly. there is no ''just go outside'' solution to these issues, because ''outside'' is policed as well.
for example, the way that sex workers have been ruthlessly and structurally targeted for social death online is completely in line with how they are treated offline as well. these things work in conjunction. if you make sure someone cannot find and vet clients online, they must do so offline. if you make sure they cannot meet clients indoors, they have to meet them on the street. if they have to meet them on the street, police have more access to these workers (to harass, assault, sexually violate, abduct, and kill them). the whole system works together. every prediction I heard from sex workers in 2016 is the reality today.
so when transfeminized people are talking about being relentlessly harassed off of every social media platform, that is not just an "online" issue. it is happening alongside their being driven out of all public space, online or offline (e.g. with bathroom policing, denial from employment, housing, and shelters, etc.)
when people from the global south are being labeled as "scammers" or "foreign bots" and getting their accounts banned repeatedly, it is part of the exact same ideological justification for border policing, detention, and deportations--it is the constant reinforcement of the idea that these people are "criminal" and here to "take what's yours" and "might appear to be someone struggling but they're not really human."
when images of people with racialized features, fat bodies, facial and skin differences, visible disabilities, intersex and transsexual sexed traits, etc., are repeatedly hidden by algorithms, marked "mature," and censored, this indicates a resurgence of "ugly laws" as part of the broader ascendant eugenics movement. this cannot be divorced from the stigmatization, defunding, dismantling, and criminalization of healthcare for "undesirable" populations.
social media is part of public space. if someone wants to prevent a population from accessing it or being seen within it, this needs to be understood as a call to keep that population out of public space more broadly. if someone who does not own private property (most people) cannot be in public, they must be either trapped within a setting where autonomy is severely limited and communication is surveilled (prisons, detention centers, psych wards, etc) or dead.
