(Fisrt time posting on Lemmy, please be patient)
I don’t know if it was also like this before, but I feel like recently every social media is focused on getting comments, likes, views, people sharing your post, being popular, when the before that (late 199X- mid 201x) was more about being unique and just sharing your own creations and remixes. What makes me feel like this is that whenever I (rarely) open Twitter and go to the homepage most of the posts are something baiting the viewer into commenting or sharing. When your post doesn’t has many interactions or views, you’re deemed as “a failure”. It seems like the (anti)social media is empty with baits and overshared memes. Long gone were the days of being original without having to directly copy someone to have validation and recognition.
Social media has become just has become just a large engagement farm.
What is happening with that title?
Gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket. I myself, I jerk off at least twice a day.
No, it’s not just an engagement farm. It’s also an incredibly valuable tool for social engineers to manipulate public opinion. So there’s that.
Don’t forget the mass manipulation of public opinion. There are a lot of players out there doing that all the time. From companies making ads that look like silly posts, and paying people or using bots to speak ill of the competition, to media agencies spreading fake news aiming at shifting people’s political views.
Yes. Welcome to lemmy we like to think we are different because we are the rage isnt served to u by the algorithm its served to u by genuine dumbasses so u can get that much more angry at it.
I think this is quite the popular opinion, even among people who enjoy social media. I feel many people just accept this is the current state of things. But yeah, the evolution happened as the stress to monetize increased, so anything to keep people on the platform.
If you post something that makes someone stay on platform long enough to see an ad or two, wonderful! The algorithm will bless you with exposure and the emptiness in your soul will be filled with likes.
Social media platforms want to make ad revenue, they need the audience to stick around and they will employ all kinds of psychological trickery to do so.
I think this is why Reddit/Lemmy is a great model. Even though “the algorithm” drives for engagement, it’s still community based. Pick the communities you want to see and it’s a radically different experience
And the algorithms for Lemmy seem simple enough in my experience. You sort by active to see what people are actually engaging in, sort by hot if you wanna see what’s building momentum (not sure if that’s actually it but that’s what it feels like) and sort by new if you just wanna basically see internet stream of consciousness
