[freehorse]

Blogs did not require one to be a technical genius. A lot of non-technical people had blogs. And ads existing per se is not what we discuss here.

Blogs require an effort to post sth because you cannot get away with posting a catchy 2-phrases sentence or a photo (you can, but that's not what they are for mainly). In this sense, yes, social media won because of convenience among other things. But the same convenience is what I find as problem with them.

And where are we now? The role of social media as "grandmothers sharing with grandkids" are long gone, in most places at least (cannot speak of the whole world). Very few from my social circles post in social media any mode. Most of the content is direct or indirect advertising (if it's not meta, it is the next door bar or yoga studio broadcasting posts), (semi-)professional content creators/influencers and, lastly, a lot of AI slop. Most people I know use facebook for events and the like, and which is definitely not what facebook optimises for or profits from. Now, most of the sharing-role has fled in closed group chat platforms (whatsapp, viber, messenger and the like).

The only thing that seems to still hold some livelihood is microblogging platforms (xtwitter and clones) which are also what replaced part of the blogosphere. But a rant about these would be too large to fit in a comment here.