[yorwba]

The UN report on the attention economy actually said:

By the 2000s, so much information was being generated worldwide that only a small fraction (0.5% in 2015) of the digital data generated was being analyzed at all.

https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/attention_economy_...

Where "analyzed" probably means something other than "got any views". In any case, the claim is unsourced, so I wouldn't put much stock in it.

The way I see it, people's ability to give attention is limited, but the ability to do something worth paying attention to is even scarcer, so even the most trivial feat (like writing a comment on HN) is likely to garner at least a few views.

Becoming famous is much harder than getting any views at all, because now you need to do something so attention-grabbing that some of your few initial viewers will tell others about it and your audience size snowballs from there.

[dredmorbius]

Do you happen to know the publication date of that report?

Internet Archive's first capture is April 2023.

The most recent references within the report are for 2021.

[yorwba]

The meeting minutes announcing the policy briefs are dated 21 March 2023 https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/24thunenmtg_minute... and the overview document https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/nesd_overview_20_m... has "20_march" in the filename, so I think publication must've happened somewhere around that time.

[dredmorbius]

Thanks!