[api]

The trend in social media for years has been away from social and toward just addictive content and finding the best way to crowdsource that content. The purpose is becoming simply to get you to spend as much time as possible staring at the phone to sell ads, and nothing more.

I predict the next advancement will be pure AI generated content, just a continuous adversarial attack on the human brain programmed to maximize viewing time for each individual. This could be packaged as things like virtual friends (Replika) or games with constantly evolving game play punctuated with ads or even as something that looks like TikTok.

Pure refined 200 proof addictive emptiness is the logical apex of “free” mass media. We will look back on TV and early generation social media as high culture compared to what’s coming.

[jmcgough]

I think we're seeing a pendulum swing in some ways. The migration to Mastodon has been really exciting because servers are funded through Patreon, not eyeballs. Communities are smaller and content is higher quality, without pressuring you to post content you think will get the most likes. It's like an actual social media platform, not what so many others have become.

[chrischen]

Facebook was never really about social. They just stumbled upon the realization that commenting on friends’ stuffs and looking at some of it was addicting. That’s why there was backlash against it because people realized Facebook wasn’t really working to help us improve our social relationships in any way but merely using it to steal our attention, much to our detriment (waste time).

Eventually AI was developed to automate addictive content which is just a more generalized solution yo what FB was doing.