“Making social media liable would mean Twitter, Facebook, even Wkipedia and Yelp couldn't exist as we know them”

“Edward Snowden said that if we want to protect ourselves against government agencies scraping our data, we should get off Dropbox, Facebook, and Google and that we should “search for encrypted communication services” because they “enforce your rights.” Few have taken his advice. Zombies can’t be deprogrammed. The social media apparatus beckons us and we become addicted, joining the billion-plus strong for whom a life without social media is an impossibility. Social contacts, dating prospects, job opportunities, communications with loved ones—just about every interaction we have—flows through social media. For most of us it isn’t a choice; it’s a necessity. Even Snowden couldn’t resist: on October 6, 2015, he joined Twitter.”

“Publicy says that each self exists in a particular social context, and all such contracts are independent. (…) It’s as if we are gaining the ability to see into the ultraviolet and infrared ends of the social spectrum when we are online, and in some contexts we are dropping out yellows or reds. To those tied to the visible color spectrum we are habituated to, this new sort of vision will be 'irreal.' But ultraviolet has always existed: we just couldn't see it before. (…) This will be a fracturing of the premises of privacy, and a slow rejection of the metaphors of shared space. The principles of publicy are derived from the intersection of infinite publics and our shared experience of time online, through media like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The innate capability we have to shift in a heartbeat from a given public, and our corresponding persona, to another, is now being accelerated by streaming social tools. This will be the decade when publicy displaces privacy, online and off.”

“"Friend us on Facebook!" is a social media strategy like "Buy me a malt liquor!" is a charitable giving plan.”

“One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.”

“Many iconic features of Twitter have been created over the years by listening and watching what people who use Twitter do with it and then working to make it easier and better for them—we still do this today.”

“Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it.”

“"This [case] looks much more like the purview of the left, at least in the West…" "You see this with people on the right being systematically ‘no platformed’, not just from media sites, but from YouTube, from Facebook, from Twitter and now from PayPal and Stripe. If any company decides that it doesn’t like the kind of thing you have to say, then you are off."”

“The so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions in the Arab world started in hopeful online communities, but once they emerged into the messy offline world, they were commandeered by religious fanatics and military juntas.”

“[To the media after a game] Well, we couldn't block…but we made up for it by not tackling.”