After seven years at Snapchat, I finally learned the truth about why our most important apps seem destined to disappoint us
This is a pretty good article. I think the author dances around it a bit but gets it: it’s all about investors wanting infinite growth.
Think about it this way- if ad-supported social media isn’t profitable (which seems to be the case) and constantly requires VC cash to stay afloat, really the customers of the product are the investors. The cult of “line go up” demands that engagement be constantly increasing, which means that it’s effectively impossible nowadays to have a social media site focused on creating a vibrant active community. Community equals steady traffic and engagement once it hits its stable point. That’s just not good enough.
It really explains why every site is trying their hardest to become TikTok- short, relatively cheap to host video clips that press the dopamine button and get users addicted to the service. Add an endless feed to keep users hooked, and you have a recipe for maximum engagement. It’s the best bang for the Buck from an investor perspective.
And the fact the author dances around an idea is why I hate reading articles online or watching YouTube videos. They need to drag the content as much as possible to maximize profit. In a 10 minute video they can push more ads, the same way that in a 10 paragraph article they can push more ads in between paragraphs or on the sides.
I think this quality of content problem vs monetization isn’t exclusive to social media.
Watching this… transition (really wish it was a death) of Web 2.0 or whatever we call the 10’s era of internet is really interesting. I disengaged from everything Social Media aside from a highly curated reddit feed (RIP BaconReader) about 7 or so years ago and it was a huge change in my mental health. I know, I know, still a social platform, but, c’mon, cut out the frontpage and just build good metas and the communities were great
Since then I’ve had moments where I’m advocating others do the same, at the detriment of sounding like a madman on occasion, just for their own sanity and space to think and breath through a situation.
Anyways, here I am on a new social media platform celebrating the death of forced engagement and yet, Lemmy feels like the web I grew up on. The BBSes and forums.
The author brings up a lot of great points and they seem pretty salient. I just am left wondering what it looks like now that the bills are due.
Can we get back to individual websites? Can I have a few dope blogs I hit up a few times a week? Can we resurrect stumbleupon? I hope so.
The jaded feeling I get every time I see a family member or friend or even stranger becomes radicalized by blatant falsehoods they find while “doing some research” is painful. This isn’t the web I know and it’s certainly not the one we need.
If it’s centralized, it can be controlled, if it can be controlled it will be bought.
I’ve been feeling the same way the last couple of weeks. I finally got so fed up with the toxicity of Instagram that I uninstalled it from my phone. And since finding Lemmy, I’ve disengaged and deleted my Reddit account. So I’m trying to figure out what to do on this Internet now. And it really feels like how I used to use it. I’m finding niche blogs and sites that people post on Lemmy. I’ll add them to my bookmarks so that I can remember to visit them again. I’m actually reading the articles and not just jumping straight into the comments. It’s like going back in time 12 years. And I don’t know if this is just in my head, but I feel like I’m regaining some of my ability to focus and increasing my attention span that’s been atrophied over the last decade. I just spent most of my weekend building and playing around with a new homelab server… Something I would have done years ago but would have been nearly impossible to do if I was stuck scrolling through the dopamine machine that is Instagram and Reddit.
If you’re dissatisfied with the results you get on Google or you’re looking for websites that might not be in Google’s search results, I recently came across this site: https://www.marginalia.nu/. The search engine touts itself as focusing on non-commercial content. It really makes me nostalgic for the old Internet… Back when you could find some random person’s blog about something really specific. They weren’t trying to get monetized or fit into some SEO algorithm. They just wanted to spread their passion for growing different varieties of butter beans, free of charge and subscription.
Congrats on the home lab! Nothing like having a single spot for containers instead of multiple random boxes and pi’s (if your anything like my slacker ass). I also have been completing some long over due server / infrastructure maintenance at home. Finally got hardwire drops to my office and den fed into a server in the garage. After 2+ years of “I’m gonna do that next week”. It feels good to make progress on things that were normally cast aside for another endless scroll of bots arguing over climate change or whatever r/shitthatwastesyourtimeandmakesyouangry was serving up for the day.
Thanks for the heads up on the search engine too. I’ve been a duckduck main for a few years but even that seems to be faltering and serving trash results lately. So many reddit results now, sure seems like they’re astroturfing search engines. Excited to have an alternative that gives me that good random one off page that a human wrote and actually may answer my question about why my goddamn proxmox network is shitting the bed again.
Cheers friend! Here’s to hoping the “new old” internet we’re experiencing right now sticks around for a bit. I think we all need it.
VCs don’t know shit about running the internet. VCs want to “hack growth”.
