Marketing has misclassified social media

The marketing practice I never understood? 

Including social media in the "owned channel" category. 

From my perspective this is a misnomer that's overdue for a correction. 

Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but I don't think there's ownership on a social media platform that's literally owned by someone else who can deactivate my handle in the next hour if they felt like it. 

(If you've ever been locked out or suspended from your account for reasons you don't understand, jumping through hoop after hoop while you plead with the platform to let you back in, you know exactly what I'm talking about it.)

I get that social's been lumped into the "owned" category because nobody's paying to have a profile or to post on a daily basis, but since algorithms hijacked the newsfeed and organic reach has plummeted faster than the value of my Beanie Baby collection, I don't really think this is true anymore either. 

If you want to be seen, you have to cough up the cash or cross your fingers and hope one day a post wins the lottery and goes viral (feel free to Google the math; your odds are comparable.)

For my fellow Millennials and the Gen Z crowd who are earning their living through social channels, it's also replaced smarter strategies as the primary way—sometimes the only way—we talk to our audiences. 

I'm also willing to bet social's the place where all your best content's stored since so much of it's created directly though the apps. 

So if you don't have a website (or the one you have's under-utilized)...

And you don't own the means of contacting everyone in your audience...

And you have to pay the broker to reach more of your own followers...

What, exactly, do you own?