- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
An era of the internet is ending, and we’re watching it happen practically in real time. Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place. Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways, alienating its developers and users and hoping it can survive by sticking its head in the sand until the battle’s over. (I thought for a while that Reddit would eventually be the last good place left, but… nope.) TikTok remains ascendent — and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobody’s on Facebook anymore…
That was a good read, thanks for sharing.
I’m on the fence on this one since I’ve mixed views on the social media era of the net. It was great, until we switched from usernames to users (Facebook charging ahead, Google following soon after).
Controversial, but I don’t mind the odd clearly marked advert targeted towards the person my browser says I am (i.e. a gamer looking for games, not someone who should be getting life insurance!) - if it isn’t invasive and is showing me something I want I’ll probably click it and take a look.
What we’ve seen evolving alongside social media is malvertising by another name - adverts that are using your desire to skip them to trick you into triggering a click. Cable-levels of advertising when listening to music - my radio offers less ads and better music sometimes. Last time I clicked an ad at work by mistake (playing a video for the class), it set of the antivirus.
The prevelance of linking online presence to your “real life”, and tying in adverts to that? That’s what killed it for me, and likely killed it for everyone else too. Bring back the days of MySpace and Geocities, and those plain banner ads that harmed no-one!