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I recently watched a YouTube video talking about the demise of a website called Tumblr (well, demise... the place is still working, but its current numbers make it a very low traffic place), how the NSFW content there made it what it was, how it turned into a very queer friendly place and how ads, revenue and the subsequent companies that owned it didn't want to do any with that content... and that was it.
The part that was most interesting to me was the conclusion about what do these places owe to their users, how you can't really compare a major of a city to the CEO of a company. A major (in theory ;-) ) works for the community that thrives in a city. A CEO of a company... just wants «the number go up» (that is, revenue) infinitely. And that got me thinking about how a lot of these social media websites started with creating a community, helping people share, talk and gather in a place.
Because yes, we humans need common places to go and meet, where our paths can cross with other strangers we might have shared interests or common ideas, or confronted ideas to debate and grow as a result. That's why on the Internet, people tend to gather, centralize, in places, when we can be all decentralized and have our own "home". That's why we have our capsules, but we have Antenna, Cosmos, Station and Bubble. Our capsules are our homes, where we reign and decide. These places I've mentioned are our plazas, the bunks in the park to sit and talk with others. I think that's how we really work as a species.
So, companies see a lot of people gathering at a park, and decides to build besides it a mall. It puts climatization, lights, security guards, bunks and a few shops. And offer it as a place for people to gather, form a community. The place obviously is great, you can go whether it rains or not, you don't need to carry the picnic food, you can buy it in the same place, all those nice things. But what a community does mostly in there is talk, share and sit together.
But the thing is that the people coming to the mall scarcely buy food or things from the gift shop. The company needs to pay for all the lights, climatization, rent, workers and all that. The company needs to keep the place free, because they attract people that way, and the community thriving, since it brings the people there. So they rent to the shops in there and expect to bring more shops, so the stalls are full and they break even. Then, the shops want people to actually buy things. We then have ads everywhere, to entice the people to buy things: Now our objective shifted from building a place for communities, to get people to buy things.
Because in the end, all social media (our company owning the mall) discover a hard truth. Communities on themselves don't generate revenue. Communities are something we humans do between us, it is part of our nature. We want to gather, talk and share. But that, in a Capitalism world like ours, cannot be monetized. Some websites started as a way to socialize, truly, but when you have to make numbers, you discover this harsh truth, then you sell your communities to ad companies. Other sites offer the community thing as a bait to gather people on their website and then sell them to ad companies.
Internet has grown in popularity thanks to the ability to make communities possible. BBS, email, forums, blogs, etc... all those things make communities possible and humans tend to want to gather in them. Whether it is a Doctor Who fan community to a Phylosophy Reading Book club. We seek like-minded individuals, and talk, share, comment, debate. Companies took that, and in the name of «showing you the most relevant things» they did a bait-and-switch to show us ads and hide the community messages we really want to see. Because, let's face it, a community is not something you can monetize at all. Not in the levels a big huge company needs.
What they end up doing is something that breaks what makes a community thrive, show ads, hide the content so they can show you more ads on your seek for it. Eventually, you can't feel connected to the people of that community, because you have a lot of noise in your communication. And also we discover the power ad companies have over *our content* and what can we say or share. And that the place was never ours to start with. We can protest all we want... but as some people over at a place where they shared links and upvotes ;-) are discovering, the website is a company property.
Lately I've been seeing this split of the huge company-based Internet, and the human-based Internet. Be it over HTTP, Gemini, Gopher... we seek that basic thing that is belonging to a community. And we are lucky we can still build them on the side. Let's keep it that way. Simple, not publiciting it, but you can actually find it when you ask yourself "This isn't what I really want to look at, there must be something better." and then, someone, from a corner, calls you «sotto voce» and talks you about these wonderful places where companies aren't involved, but human communities.
2023-06-22 · 9 months ago · 👍 skyjake, jsreed5, drh3xx, kelbot, flipperzero, maxwelld, pixeld