I get why all the sites are getting shittier (interest rates etc etc) -- but why are they all getting shittier in the same shitty dumb way?
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'
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
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."
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
Algorithms are harder to prove and don't interrupt the flow of content, thus less people get pissed, which means less people leave, and they can charge higher rates to advertisers.
Because they care about one metric: time spent watching ads.
If they only show you chronological - for example - there is a risk you open the app, find that nothing has happened (or what happened is of low quality). Controlling what you see makes it easier to also ensure there's always a reason to visit the page. Leaving it all to recency or popularity or something means handing over the control of your time.
And it's always going to piss off people but the important part is what it does for the big masses (which likely is - more time spent watching ads)
Inflation/cost of living/etc isn't singlehandedly increasing "enshittification" but rather the boundless greed of capitalism which seeks infinite growth of profit.
It's unsustainable so we'd better make more humans to buy more stuff from a handful of people.
Companies seek profit but let’s not forget that as people, we control what we buy and use. We’re here on Lemmy because we reject the bullshit. If more of us rejected the bullshit, they stop doing it.
But it takes a while to detect, form an opinion, then act on it. Suppose that 10,000 people per day reject some brand, say this is enough!, and refuse to buy their products. Well, the marketing and sales department has its work cut out: use mild deception, purchase competitors, change local laws, and make sure that more customers are added than the attrition. And even if they didn’t add any new customers, there are so many current customers for companies like proctor and gamble or nestle, that it will still take 15,000 days or 41 years for even half of the US population to “reject” the brand or company. It’s just not feasible for individuals to fight corporate advertising and marketing mechanics on appropriate time and economic scales.
But compared to a government regulatory body? That scares a company or industry, or at least it used to :(
The algorithm bullshit is to show you more content (and therefore more ads). The ideal for social media companies is like tik tok where you just scroll endlessly.
On twitter or Reddit I look at the posts from the accounts and subs I follow and then am done.
I think it's the same principle that led to the slogan "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM". It's a list of checkboxes that someone can present to investors and get money.
I was just thinking something along these lines. Telling investors and venture capitalists that your site has "content algorithms" sounds a hell of a lot more professional than "we have ads and subscriptions", even if the algorithms in practice are just as bad, if not worse. What I've learned from my time in the corporate world is that quality of a product does not matter one bit, only how you sell the product marketing strategies and profit projections to investors.