Step 1, make a special club and invite everyone to join.

Step 2, ensure everyone uses the club as a primary means of staying connected.

Step 3, promote some people and give them special privileges for "good behavior." Give them a blue badge with a checkmark or something so they stand out.

Step 4, push a them/us mentality and start excommunicating people who aren't expressing "good behavior."

Step 5, convince all those with "good behavior" badges that everyone who is excommunicated are savages and dehumanize them at every point.

Step 6, don't let Elon Musk buy the cult.

Social Media is a cult, with cult mentality. You never needed it to be connected with your family or friends. If you think you need their apparatus to do that then you've simply bought into their advertising bandwagon.

"If you want to talk to your friends and family, you have to join up and follow our rules."

Most importantly, you know it's a cult when members are not allowed to talk with people who are being excluded. It's even more obvious when you aren't allowed to leave without consequences, i.e. being excommunicated yourself.

Social Media performs these roles perfectly. It's technological achievements are merely a pretense for the cult mentality, where those in the club are convinced they are exemplary humans and anyone the club has deemed unworthy are dehumanized.

The scariest part of it all?

You've already known this all along... You just didn't want to admit it was allowed to get this bad...