what is Social Media doing to us?
Articles about social media platforms and their effects on society.
Jerod Morris and
what is Social Media doing to us?
Kids will not believe me when I say this, but people didn’t always absorb their “content” by way of mysterious algorithmic black magic on endlessly-scrolling crack feeds. We used to type web addresses into our browsers, and actually visit our favorite sites. This, going to “www dot college shitpost dot com” or whatever, was itself considered a
... See moreThe illusion persists because there’s so much money in it. Back in 2016, Ben Thompson wrote that Google’s AI efforts were at odds with its business model: “If a user doesn’t have to choose from search results, said user also doesn’t have the opportunity to click an ad, thus choosing the winner of the competition Google created between its... See more
Drew Austin • It's Time to Lie Down and Be Counted
I see two divergent media futures emerging—each based on networks that serve very different groups.
In the first future, our networks serve the technologists who build them, the advertisers that pay for them, and the governments that control them. These networks compete for users in a war for attention by making systems that spit out superficially... See more
In the first future, our networks serve the technologists who build them, the advertisers that pay for them, and the governments that control them. These networks compete for users in a war for attention by making systems that spit out superficially... See more
Chris Best • The Two Futures of Media
In Walden , his 1854 reflection on simple living, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The cost of a thing is the amount of ... life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it.
Becky Isjwara • March 2024
Once upon a time, the Internet was predicated on user-generated content. The hope was that ordinary people would take advantage of the Web’s low barrier for publishing to post great things, motivated simply by the joy of open communication. But then ad sales came into play.
That business model is still what most of the Internet relies on today.... See more
That business model is still what most of the Internet relies on today.... See more