Sri Lanka shut down social media. My first thought was "good."

It pains me as a journalist, and someone who once believed that a worldwide communications medium would herald more tolerance, to admit this — to say that my first instinct was to turn it all off. But it has become clear to me with every incident that the greatest experiment in human interaction in the history of the world continues to fail in ever more dangerous ways.

In short: Stop the Facebook/YouTube/Twitter world — we want to get off…

But while social media had once been credited with helping foster democracy in places like Sri Lanka, it is now blamed for an increase in religious hatred. That justification was behind another brief block a year ago, aimed at Facebook, where the Sri Lankan government said posts appeared to have incited anti-Muslim violence.

“The extraordinary step reflects growing global concern, particularly among governments, about the capacity of American-owned networks to spin up violence,” The Times reported on Sunday.