The other way social media ends

Not through cunning overmonetization, but blithe stupidity.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

None of this applies to me, a very smart person. —Kate

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I’ve been trying to ignore this potential TikTok ban for months, mostly because the government has boy-who-cried-wolfed it one too many times. Apocalyptic social media moments in general have almost always turned out to be false alarms, because the collective of users often seems to have more power than individual execs or lawmakers. But those execs and especially lawmakers do have power. 

There’s a different way this all goes down, and I worry it’s the timeline we’re actually in. What if the leaders ruin social media not by overregulating or overmonetizing the platforms to death, but instead by blithely fumbling the future simply because they’re very stupid? 

On March 23, TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified in front of the townspeople of Pawnee, Indiana—I mean Congress. The people responsible for running the entire country asked questions that included: