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A privately owned social media platform exists for no other reason than to promote the political agenda and economic interests of its owner(s). So where you see racism, misogyny, and lies I see a racist misogynist who lies.

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A honest question. What is some example of the non-privately owned social media?

Mastodon, Lemmy, any other Fediverse project.

Sure you could argue that any individual server is privately owned, but the collective protocol is about as public as something like social media can be

When did a protocol became social media (in a common sense)? I may have missed something.

Since IRC, email, probably earlier

Honest answer, not something we’ve achieved yet. Some hints of it in NNTP, HTTP, RSS/Atom, Usenet… but until we decide that Internet connectivity is a fundamental human right and actually back that up I think we’ll still be a long way off from a digital commons.

Eh, I mean generally they exist to sell ads, typically in a fairly amoral way (like, within limits, nothing that will annoy shareholders too much). Twitter's the exception, here.

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