Social media was born as a tool for connection and freedom of expression. Today, however, it has become one of the most concentrated instruments of power in history. A handful of private companies—Meta, ByteDance, X Corp, and Google—control what billions of people see every day, deciding what content is amplified, who is silenced, and what narratives dominate public debate. This is not technological neutrality: it is an abuse of structural power.
The most blatant example is selective censorship. During the pandemic, platforms like Facebook and YouTube massively removed content that questioned official vaccination policies or the origins of the virus, even when it came from recognized scientists. In 2020, Twitter (now X) suppressed the New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop, even blocking links shared by the White House. In Brazil, the Superior Electoral Court forced X to censor accounts critical of the government under threat of a nationwide ban; when the company resisted, it was fined millions of dollars. The pattern is clear: whoever controls the platform controls the acceptable truth.
Economic power exacerbates the problem. Algorithms reward content that generates the most engagement, even if it's toxic. This has enriched creators of disinformation and conspiracy theories while impoverishing traditional media and moderate content creators. In the Philippines, coordinated disinformation campaigns on Facebook contributed to the reelection of authoritarian leaders. In Myanmar, the platform was blamed for facilitating the Rohingya genocide by failing to moderate hateful content in Burmese.
But the most subtle abuse is psychological control. Social networks know more about us than our own families: our tastes, fears, sexual desires, political ideology. They use this information to keep us hooked and sell us both products and political candidates. Cambridge Analytica was just the tip of the iceberg.
The solution isn't more state censorship—that only transfers power from Silicon Valley to governments—but breaking up monopolies and mandating algorithmic interoperability and transparency. As long as a few corporations decide what the world can say, freedom of expression will remain a costly illusion.
Social media isn't inherently bad. It's dangerous because no one elected it and no one controls it democratically.
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