Who can save us from social media? At this point, perhaps just us – The Harvard Gazette

The boldest and most creative of social media’s would-be reformers, a small group of legal scholars and other academics, joined by a handful of rebel programmers, have a more radical plan. They call it frictional design. They believe the existing technological system needs to be dismantled and rebuilt in a more humanistic form. Pursuing an approach reminiscent of the machine-breaking strategy of the 19th-century British Luddites, if without the violence, they seek, in effect, to sabotage existing social media platforms by reintroducing friction into their operations — throwing virtual sand into the virtual works.