The fact that “non-profit social media” exists is not nearly enough to disprove the technical veracity (the best kind of correct, after all) of the accusation that the overall technology does target, modulate, and commodify interaction — regardless of the eventual use of said data.
The technology of social media is just writing + ways to find it. The criticisms being leveled apply way better to the narrower technology of large scale, opaque content algorithms (which for most are indistinguishable from social media because the only use platforms that have it).
While I don’t discount the veracity of your specific example, its existence doesn’t diminish the societal threat that is the accepted mode of social media itself.
What do you mean by that though? What I object to is reducing the problem to the label. I agree with the sentiment of the OP title, and what I see in the linked thread is people dismissing the idea of a possibility of addressing the problem with basically reductive semantic arguments like
You are aware they will all be social media as well right?
We don’t disagree, then. ✊🏽
