While it might be tempting to blame the people who refuse to wear masks, or the politicians who would rather discuss individual rights than public health, or the president who would rather tweet about beans, our present crisis runs much deeper than any single individual or group. The structures and assumptions we take for granted are themselves part of the problem. Calls to defund the police provide a helpful analogue. Until we fundamentally reimagine what law enforcement means and does, lasting change will not be possible; all the injustice baked into the system will continue emerging from that system. Something similar could be said of social media: Until we fundamentally reimagine our information ecosystem and our respective roles within it, we’ll keep repeating the same patterns over and over—not as a bug of the system, not as a feature of the system, but as the system itself.
[…]