This is the state of the modern internet — ultra-profitable platforms outright abdicating any responsibility toward the customer, offering not a “service” or a “portal,” but cramming as many ways to interrupt the user and push them into doing things that make the company money. The greatest lie in tech is that Facebook and Instagram are for “catching up with your friends,” because that’s no longer what they do. These platforms are now pathways for the nebulous concept of “content discovery,” a barely-personalized entertainment network that occasionally drizzles people or things you choose to see on top of sponsored content and groups that a relational database has decided are “good for you.”
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I now want you to go on Facebook, scroll down, and see how quickly you hit an advertisement.
Nah, I stopped using facebook after college and I don’t really associate with people who do use facebook (or Ig, or any others.)
That would actually be an ingenious way to make people try facebook again… urgh
The term you are looking for is enshittification
From the post: “As a result, these platforms were (and are) a form of bait-and-switch, the underpinning philosophy of Cory Doctorow’s “Enshittification” theory, where platforms build massive monopolies based on offering good, useful services, and then slowly turn the screws on the customer to seek ever-growing profits. Yet as I’ve noted before, I feel that enshittification misses one crucial thing — that these companies aren’t doing this out of a lack of profitability or failure of their business model, but because the modern internet has become somewhere between a social experiment and a human mining operation.”
This was great, thanks for sharing!
sponsored content and groups that a relational database has decided are “good for you.”
I don’t think they could possibly care less what’s good for you.
Just for funsies, the Instagram profits for 2021 are roughly half of the Department of Education budget. Which is one of the larger federal programs.
Nice write-up!
It’s been crazy to see the AI hype train amusement park ride lately.
A rant about ads shoving me pop ups for a newsletter in my face. How ironic.
I always thought that facebook got a bad rap. I mean, it was stupid, but I always enjoyed it because I could catch up with old friends, who might not be actively in my life at the time, and for that it was special.
However, sometime recently (as in years, I guess) as people have left or become more private, my feed has slowly been taken over by suggested content. It’s always pushed front and center. Literally unavoidable because there is no setting to say “don’t suggest anything to me.” and no matter how often you hide shit, they’ll just keep feeding more. I’ve all but completely abandoned using facebook now…I just go on to check my local buy nothing group, or post things myself. Occasionally I go to see what stupid shit my previous good friend, who got totally sucked into Trump world, is saying.
Why u c ads tho?
