[ecocentrik]

Wrong take. The social or political positions that advertisers take are all strategically calculated to maximize sales and they take those position regardless of the advertising platform.

Correct take: Monetization pressure creates engagement pressure which is unnatural for human social communities outside of temporary fads and social upheaval events. In social terms Facebook, X, Truth Social... are thirsty and can only continue to grow if they convince you to be thirsty too.

[phailhaus]

Like I said: any system that optimizes for engagement has this problem. Advertising revenue scales with engagement, so engagement becomes optimized. Advertisers are not picking and choosing particular policy positions to place ads on. They're targeting certain demographics, and want to make sure their ads are not next to trash content. So ironically, ads both cause companies to optimize for engagement but they also force moderation.

If you fixate on dropping ads but still optimize for engagement, you get the worst of both worlds.