[sliken]

Indeed, seems to be a very common pattern. Poor search, low signal to noise, try to reinforce doom scrolling for more eyeball minutes.

I didn't realize how big an impact that had, till I tried Mastodon. No ads, no patterns to try to keep you online longer. Just posts from who you follow.

What's worse is apparently cell and bluetooth tracking of all customers in realtime is becoming more common. So retailers can optimize their floor layouts so you have to go through as much of the store as possible to get what you want. Trying to stretch out the experience, show you the most ads/products, and lower the signal to noise down close to zero, just like ad driven social media.