it's never just ads or subscriptions, it's a shitty integrated fucking garbage algoritm driven with content you don't want to see shown to you, the interface is ALWAYS shittier and worse, no explanation, just that it looks 'modern'

i'm so fucking sick of it lads

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[–] quixotic120 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because it works

It doesn’t work for you but it works for the casual user

Promoting shitty short rage bait content, charged headlines where no one reads the articles, etc drives traffic up with casual users who are far less likely to use ad blockers, far more likely to use native apps, far more likely to enable tracking features blindly, etc.

Power users don’t like it but power users don’t view ads, are more likely to be privacy focused, etc. they also are a very small demographic so they are simply ignored once they are annoying. Before they are annoying they are marketed to bc they can be milked with things like premium subscriptions for no ads or whatever.

Subscriptions don’t sell for social media, advertising doesn’t pay until you’re scaled wayyyyy up, and generally once advertising and outside funding gets seriously involved they start pushing you to get as many impressions as possible. So basically advertising is a cancer that ruins everything along with the capitalistic need for constant growth and endless profits

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would add misinformation to the set of tools used to increase engagement. People who are vulnerable to misinformation embrace it because it makes them feel more powerful, being in possession of "the hidden truth."

[–] quixotic120 4 points 1 year ago

Sure. And it works both ways, also gets the other side who feel the need to comment to correct it. Divisive comment is similar, for many it drives feelings of superiority but for others it’s rage bait.

But there’s a lot of sub categories to toolset here. One of the interesting parts of Reddit was that it showed that users would categorize their ragebait; r/stupidfood, r/diwhy often featured obvious troll farm content that was designed to get people to just comment “this is so fucking stupid”. But when it got reposted to Reddit it got its own category and people subbed to it; they wanted to see more of it. They want to see videos of people wasting food to farm comments. once again the simpsons predict the future