Hypocrisy and PR spin aside, he’s not wrong. I think, on the balance, that social networks are a net negative development for humanity and should be destroyed.
Yes and no. Problem is the media which cherry-picks the one thing in a thousand good people say which can be misconstrued as sounding bad and then amplifying it to the world to profit off hate-clicks. By that standard Eric is in the same boat as the rest of us. We're all idiots no smarter than our worst moment since coming online.
I think you are absolutely right about mass social networking, where people/pages can have millions of followers and advertisers have access to extremely granular filters. This form of the internet is not good for us. It's too big, too impersonal, and too public.
I would be fine if Facebook and co. continued to exist - but the whole thing is maybe a little bit too connected. I really hope that the future of social media can focus on smaller and more intimate groups that (mostly) know each other IRL. For example I love my family's group chat, my little fitness group, etc. and all of those things happen on social media. Social media just needs to be scaled down to be a more human-friendly environment.
The internet is always hailed as empowering the people but in reality what it did was make the powerful even more powerful and give a voice to people who should not have a voice.
You certainly will always be disappointed if you have such vague notions of who "should be" and "shouldn't be". You will at some point be shocked that leopards ate your face after advocating for unleashing face eating leopards upon people.
Who shouldn't have been given a platform: Terrorists, cartels, corrupt elites and government officials. These types of people only got stronger. Not every argument on the internet needs be responded to with snarky quips.