reading this and saying like "it's because you're expecting profit-focused systems to be good to use" in my head after every paragraph
https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/18/23672769/social-media-inevitable-death-monetization-growth-hacks
it's not Social Media is Doomed it's more like Capitalism Creates Bad Products. in my humble onion
maybe it's just me working with definitions that are too slippery, but as I understand it, social media and social networks are two different things that only sort of overlap. cohost is a social network but not social media, because social media requires data-driven excess (and capitalism) to make any sense at all.
social networks are about communicating, and you can try to sell things through them, but that's not their entire point.
social media is entirely about trying to sell shit and the platform, practically, has to sell ads to keep itself afloat. users talking to each other on social media isn't the point, it's all about brands.
so yes, under this model, social media is dying and it should die because it sucks.
pfft hold up
yeah I want to be clear that the author of the article is capitalism brained as fuck
what even is this? "people want to be a product!" no they don't, you're seeing capitalism drive people to advertise themselves to survive
dude even points out a handful of paragraphs later that seeking IPOs drive the move towards ad-focused stuff because it's easy income streams for the company... which means it's investors. it's capitalism. the problem is capitalism.
but still blames it on the users?
argh, where's that stick at