Plenty of people are complaining on social apps and sites now about their disappointing experiences with modern technology... It's becoming more and more easy to see a break in the enchantment that once existed online with everyone once before... People are becoming more an more angry in comments on Twitter (X), TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram towards each other, and complaining that no one is seeing their posts, while corporate leadership for these platforms appears to be completely tone deaf to all of the growing dissent, while they launch new features that do nothing to change the root cause of this growing disappointment with software and tools they have used every day for years out of their life. It's pretty easy to see the underlying thread that no one wants to disrupt the revenue streams, as social media is now at the very root of influence on our world economy and public consciousness...
Since the old days, where Friendster and Myspace (oh how we miss thee) started, they promised that we'd meet new people, and get to share our music and art, which looking back at it all was clunky, but still worked better than editing ear-worm-worthy clips of our music into tons of video content every day, making sure our photos are cut to weird arbitrary dimensions and spelling was right so that or posts don't totally embarrass us well after they're posted. We're required now to spend hours in being cordial and accommodating to the wild assortment of comments we get on social apps rather than working on our product, while also engaging with others (as if it's a full time job) while we don't receive one red cent from the platforms we do it upon in most cases... That's right, MOST of the the real people posting TV and radio quality content rarely get paid, and if they do, it's small drops in the bucket compared to the money that platforms generate off of all that sweet crowdsourced free struggle labor... It's a whole other story, but if you're shocked by that, the next 2 paragraphs, Boy I tell you what!
"Should a company run a service for free?" may be the main argument presented by philosophers on the matter, but to logical people that know how these platforms started as free hubs of activity until dependency set in, it is fairly easy to see that the same methods commonly used in drug dealing were leveraged to create dependency on social platforms, and that alone raises serious questions of representational integrity of many major platforms that can't easily be covered with fluffy wool.
At the time of publication of this doc, Instagram reportedly made over ~32 billion dollars in 2021, primarily from ad revenue, and estimates say that that revenue is growing. I made zero dollars off running my Instagram page, but I sure posted a lot that year while averaging 100 views or less per post on the platform with hundreds of millions of users... YouTube as well is reported to have made over 28 billion dollars in 2021 as well -- One could hardly say these companies are struggling to function and deliver quality experiences to their content creators citing those profits.
Dunkin Donuts (purely for contrast) employs many employees and makes a lot of customers very happy with annual revenue being reportedly well under $3 billion each year so far cited running over 18000 distribution points in approximately 60 countries worldwide... SOURCE: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/5/24122 ... c-monopoly
If Dunkin Donut's revenue was that of YouTube even, at 28 billion annually, The entire world would be shoulders deep in wonderful coffee and even donuts without figuring out how to earn mysterious likes in order to help everyone's enjoyment of the services they provide... If likes were real donuts of all shapes and sizes that too our allergies and taste preferences into considerations of course, just imagine how we could get rid of all this frustration with social media altogether! Great.. All of a sudden I'm craving a donut, so I'll wrap this up shortly :/
Deep revelations come when real comparisons of how the social media machine operates in truth, as most of the time, these companies operate mysteriously and in secret, as only the designers and engineers of code truly know how it works... I write about it all a lot these days, because social platforms dominate public attention now more than ever in almost every aspect of doing business.
The process of deploying these large-scale software-driven platforms is pretty much all handled now by private companies that regularly face little auditing, regulation, and oversight by official (government) bodies because the platforms, code, and content are often too obscured and vast to quantify and evaluate. Just as an example (but a completely made up example mind you) if you had a team of only 10 aviation administration inspectors assigned to Boeing, even if they were the best at what they do, inspecting every plane that Boeing puts out before they can fly would hit a brick wall, especially if each plane takes 6-8 months to build in plants scattered all around the world... It's safe to say that oversight, safety, and quality slips when there are very few accountable inspectors, as Boeing reportedly put out 528 commercial aircraft, 157 military aircraft, 5 satellites in 2023. SOURCE TO MAKE THIS EDITORIAL LOOK MORE STATISTICALLY DRIVEN (even though it's really not): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing
Footnote, I gave up on trying to creating a meaningful math-driven example, but the only official inspectors of how social media operates to this point has been the FCC, DOJ, and Congress pretty much, and I read an article that a (to remain unnamed) Congress member was thinking about returning to college to get a degree on how the internet works, so that's goin places... (congratulations are in order for keeping up with the Internet, I'm sure, It's only been around since 1983...>:/)
For real comparison's sake though, an estimate of GDP for the entire country of Jamaica last year was just under $18 billion dollars... A lot less than what YouTube (~$28B), Meta (~$117B), and less than half of what TikTok (~$40B) made in 2022... I'm sure many people will tell you that visiting Jamaica has made them happier than social media did last year, if there were Donuts and coffee served on the plane, I'm sure, for me at least, it likely would have been an overload in terms of a sensory experience. If we employed absolutely everyone on the island of Jamaica to create a social app for tourism, food, beach life, and entertainment, I'd personally be the first to sign up honestly... I have no association with Jamaican tourism or government, so that's just a personal and non-profit statement)
When you consider what is really going on in our world today, how many children are depressed to the point of withdrawal and even suicide, how mass casualty and criminal incidents are often filmed and posted online by perpetrators and spectators, how the quality of products and services have been negatively impacted and diminished by scams and cost cutting, how social (human) communication seems to be dwindling while brash personalities and narcissistic egos are on the rise, how scams and disinformation are dominating a lot of online interactions now (often bleeding into and affecting our real lives), how it's becoming harder and harder to grow your business without having a major marketing budget while evangelizing a platforms and process that can pull the rug from under you at any time, along with a laundry list of other concerns generated by the way the modern web works -- The least we could do now is begin to ask some real (no-gaslight) questions:
Where the insane amounts of profits are going, and what's being returned in value to platform users?
if it's fair that we're being charged to post our own IP on deeply controlled community apps for them to sample it into AI products that they in turn sell us access to?
Is it good for our mental health and success to see ads for air fryers, whatever Elon is doing each second, and jokes about OJ passing away (and 2,000 other related stories about his legacy) scattered into an infinite scrolling page of everyone's hot take on the matter in the same place we go to for timely news and to post our own important hot takes on OJ's life and legacy, creative works we've made, funny memes about life, and business plans?
Should the requirement for everyone (even those not making a profit from posting) being able to post anything online, that actually gets seen by anyone else, be to pay a monthly for a blue (verified) check mark or ads?
How are people posting vital clips from TV shows on TikTok, yet I constantly get my videos blocked just for adding music I personally made to them?
Are each of us actively contributing towards our own personal undermining and social downfall by clicking like on endless Katt Williams/Shannon Sharpe/Joe Rogan interview clips, clearly bootlegged content from YouTube reposted to TikTok, All the original ancient blurry memes copied from Break.Com EbaumsWorld already over-reposted everywhere 2 million times, ads for glitter-vinyl wrapping & detailing your expensive SUV, and brutal police car chase videos?
Should we have some sort of qualification test for Congress people on whether they understand how the Internet works, how the internet can become really bad without proper regulation, and perhaps also ban enrichment of trading shares of social media and news companies amongst them (at least)?
With the decline in utility of social platforms for individuals trying to create business growth while the cost of success and threats to owning your IP and posts on social media continues to quickly rise and be gamified, is it time to focus more on running and updating your own independent web site? You know, like back when you didn't have to spend the entire day on the Internet?
When we log on to (and participate in) closed communities, our discourse is controlled without us truly knowing how. the complaints can easily be moderated away, the most popular trends now can often be curated to serve the profit of whichever platform you're on at the moment, although I try not to praise this one too much, despite having record viewership this year to which I'm very thankful for... The Internet prior to proliferation and conquer by giant social platforms (to which the most dominant ones have converted now from free use to paid use) if you can remember it was vibrant, individualistic, a bit more polite overall, and a lot more fostering of great ideas and business growth, it was originally a bacon for creating wealth opportunity and for informational accuracy and accountability... As we've progressed into the hellscape of "Low opportunity ad-driven no-choice-but-spam monopoly-run Internet" (serious description just added for sensationalist and comedic impact there).
If you hear anyone only speaking super positively about social tech these days, perhaps be wary -- They may either be an investor, a trust fund inheriting child of a tech exec, an oil money heir, or even a guy that can turn a $44Billion dollar vital public communication tool into his own personal personal idea pad that you need to pay to compete to write on the last page of.
I think it's long overdue for us to have more discussions about how our current "social networks" have turned tides towards not really helping us to work & grow as individuals, while (adding insult to injury) charging us to work for primarily for their closed-circuit (A witty CircuitBored.Com reference isn't it?) benefit... This current model is Social NetWorking that is likely Socially NotWorking for the majority.
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