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by lallysingh 2175 days ago
Which means the discourse dies and the media is no longer social.
2 comments

Systems that only work to converse with your "friends" (which I put in quotes, as we use that term so liberally online; just like, an opt-in follow mechanism where you can't be spammed by random strangers) are still "social".
It only dies if it's out-competed by something else. When you make a change to the law that everybody has to follow, you can end up just turning everything to shit because nobody is allowed to do better.
It also dies if nobody uses it anymore. If all of social media was like 4chan, usage would drop by at least 90%.
Once again, people only stop using it if there is some better alternative. It's not as if people are going to stop communicating with each other.
Near a small town there was a small lake. Many people loved to swim in the lake. One year, a terrible accident resulted in harmful pollution spilling into the lake. No one swims in the lake anymore.

They haven't stopped swimming because of some better alternative. They stopped swimming because swimming conditions have changed and now it is a bad idea.

This story is directly analogous to the scenario described in the comment that started this entire sub-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23743161

If section 230 is repealed and social media becomes too toxic for most people to use, of course people would not stop communicating. The vast majority of human communication doesn't even occur on social media.