[wwweston]

> Makes me wonder if there's a market for the equivalent of health food where we go back to social media and deliberately avoid "recommendation media" (which may be the most important two words in the entire post).

I think there's definitely a product in there for people who want a tool to help manage their attention, one they can intentionally shape.

But that product cannot be primarily ad-supported, since the fundamental purpose of ad-supported tech is to command (and sell) attention. Users would need to be customers, not the product, which means they would need to be willing to pay. And since attention is power, anyone producing this would either have to be past motivation for more power, or principled about not abusing the potential in abusing an attention management tool.

I'm sure the userbase and builders who can make this happen exist, but they are smaller. The incentives against it are powerful currents. Most of us will choose the opaque cost of selling our attention and behavioral trail over the transparent cost of our currency. Most of us are not past motivation for more power.