Social media has never been neutral. Here's how they enslaved us
2025-02-18 10:39:50
TiranaPost
Social networks have never been neutral. They have changed, with every scroll, the very way we think about reality. This is digital technofeudalism.
It is not a dystopia of the future. It is the present, in which we are already immersed. A system of power, which is not limited only to the control of information, but also shapes collective consciousness through technological architectures, which present themselves to us as neutral and inevitable.
It is not a deviation from the system, or an unexpected development. No, it is its fullest realization.
Social platforms have always operated according to this logic. The presence of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and other techno-oligarchs at Trump's inauguration is simply the moment when power comes on stage and is photographed. Because they no longer need to hide behind the rhetoric of technological neutrality.
It must be admitted, with ruthless honesty, that we - thinkers, journalists, academics, analysts, have accepted this system because it has offered us a power that we so dearly desired: the ability to spread ideas, to shape opinions, to easily build a public through their spaces.
It was a Faustian bargain, and we knew it. In exchange for appearance and influence, we turned a blind eye (sometimes both) to the fragile foundations of the edifice.
Article after article, post after post, we have contributed to legitimizing the system that we wanted to dismantle with words.
Technofeudalism transformed us, from unconscious subjugated to conscious vassals.
We have always known that this control architecture is not neutral. It is designed to fragment public discourse into algorithmic bubbles, to transform debate into confrontation, to reduce the complexity of thought to the binary logic of likes.
The radicalization of public discourse is not a side effect, but a clear structural characteristic of platforms designed to maximize engagement through polarization.
And what we are experiencing is not so much a crisis of democracy as a profound transformation of the public sphere.
Digital citizenship is a form of voluntary slavery. A submission presented to us as a choice, where participation itself is subordinated to the logic of profit and control.
Accepting this dimension is essential to imagining forms of resistance that go beyond sterile criticism of technocratic power.
Technical alternatives already exist: decentralized platforms, open source protocols, autonomous and interconnected communication systems. But their limited adoption reveals how the problem is not primarily technical.
The real obstacle is the psychological and social addiction that dominant platforms have created.
The way out therefore requires a twofold movement: on the one hand, the development of alternative technical infrastructures that embody the principles of autonomy and democratic control, and on the other hand, the cultivation of new forms of mental ecology.
*This article was published by Bota.al and reposted by Tiranapost.al
