Why do all social media platforms devolve into a popularity contest? It feels we're in a new era of discourse on what's wrong with social media & how to fix it. There is no shortage of things to blame. Blame the business model. Blame the advertisers. Blame the protocol,… Show more
In the late aughts, Twitter and Facebook still valued curiosity, but over the next decade they realized that it wasn't good for business; curiosity brought people to their platforms, but then it whisked them away. So Facebook began paying news companies to make videos that could be hosted on the site, so that users would never leave the page. Twitt
... See moreThe trouble with the internet is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.
· from ‘The Internet Is Broken’: @ev Is Trying to Salvage It (2017)
Some saw it as a dire turn for the wider internet, which had begun to put growth above the concerns of everyday people. (Facebook would later become a case in point.) “That’s the fate of all social media,” said Julie Mora-Blanco, an early YouTube moderator who went to work for Twitter. “You start with a small group, you cultivate a community, you g
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