[nickik]

> is a reaction against the powerlessness of users and governments against the unassailable power of these corporations

Its about governments powerlessness to control the message from foreign cooperations likely influenced by foreign governments.

Maybe 0.000001% of it is 'protecting users'.

> essentially, the ability to control their feeds

Again, probably 0.0001% of Users will so even if you give them the option.

> making the exploits and faults in these platforms as visible as possible by "hacking" them.

So hurting users even more in the process?

[vharuck]

>Again, probably 0.0001% of Users will so even if you give them the option.

It depends on the implementation. A good example for user control is Pandora. Not hard at all to control what music I'll hear.

[salmonfamine]

> Its about governments powerlessness to control the message from foreign cooperations likely influenced by foreign governments.

Fair enough, that is also an issue.

> Maybe 0.000001% of it is 'protecting users'.

I think we need to bring in concrete examples here. Consider GDPR -- would you characterize that as a governmental entity protecting its users?

> Again, probably 0.0001% of Users will so even if you give them the option.

I kind of doubt that. Facebook has introduced limited control over certain aspects of your feed and everyone I know has used those features. Even non-technical people I know routinely complain about suggested content, non-chronological feeds, and so on. These are popular (if not nearly-universal) concerns.

> So hurting users even more in the process?

Ok, I was off the mark there. I just mean that there are problems with the current platforms that expose real vulnerabilities into public discourse and democracy that have been exploited, and will be exploited much more thoroughly in the future. So doing nothing is not sustainable.