| Many users ARE stupid and lazy, though certainly not all. But when you create a platform that incentives lazy dumb behavior from both your consumers and your content creators, you end up having a platform with mostly lazy dumb content that mostly only appeals to lazy dumb users, which then creates a feedback loop. Twitter is a prime example of this. The limited tweet length, and the nature of their algorithm incentivizes the "content-creators" on the platform, I.E. the top 1% of users with a significant follower base, to tweet quick, low information, "hot takes" that mostly appeal to dumb partisanship. Also, the way "engagement", I.E. "views" works, incentivizes "zinger" style shit-slinging rather than actual discussion. This ends up driving away people looking for interesting discussions, opinions, or information, reducing the "market" on that platform for a content-creator who wants to create informed or interesting content. This feedback loop cycles over and over, until eventually, a platform that might have once provided interesting content ends up being a place that only provides the lowest brow kind of echo chamber drivel. And this is how Twitter has ended up being a place where the most popular voices are on either side of a binary partisan line, either celebrating the ambush and shooting of two police officers or pushing the idea that anyone with even the slightest past criminal history has no human rights and deserves to be shot by the police. |