[didericis]

What is the root cause of those incentives? Is it the platform, or the predominate audience on the platform?

I’d argue the only reason subscription based platforms have a higher probability of offering quality is that the pay barrier creates a more filtered user base that prefers quality.

If a platform dependent on ad revenue had some other barrier to entry, like content only accessible to an audience that preferred that type of high quality content to low quality content, I don’t see ads having a negative effect.

[mdifrgechd]

I think there is also an element of short term vs long term reward. Things that are more likely to be worth paying for often are harder and longer term in some way (like university or even reading a novel) while ad delivered content generally is optimized to be easy to consume, and almost consequentially is very shallow. Because the goal is to keep attention, not to be comprehensive or useful.

So I think there is an argument that ad support, and attention focused platforms in general, do have a negative effect on the content.

[higerordermap]

> What is the root cause of those incentives?

Belief that collecting more data gives them an edge in targetting customers, with an assumption that user_analyze.py can think like humans and optimally target users.