Sublime

with more regard for volume than quality—because volume, sheer time spent, is what makes money for the platform through targeted advertising.

Glenn McDonald,

These deranged takes, and their unnerving proximity to online monetization, are case studies in the way that our world—digitally mediated, utterly consumed by capitalism—makes communication about morality very easy but makes actual moral living very hard. You don’t end up using a news story about a dead toddler as a peg for white entitlement

Since the For You algorithm favors only the most instantly mesmerizing content, its constructive videos—such as “how to” guides and field journalism—tend to be relegated to the fringes in favor of tasty but malignant junk info. Many of the most popular TikTokers, such as Charli D’Amelio, Bella Poarch, and Addison Rae, do little more than vapidly

Gondelman’s post, which has received nearly 70,000 likes, resonated because it speaks to a hugely important and rarely discussed aspect of the misinformation problem: the huge consumer demand for it. The rise of social media and parallel decline of mainstream journalism have enabled us to create what researcher Renee DiResta calls “bespoke