They say we're past "social media" and are now in the age of algorithms: the "recommendation media."
Submitted by retepretepretep t3_102zkm0 in Futurology
With everything that’s happening in the social media space right now — Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the subsequent layoff that followed, Meta’s mass layoffs and $36 billion gamble on the metaverse that has yet to yield results, and the earlier collective negative reaction to Instagram’s new algorithm — it’s easy to say that the once darling of the internet has lost its luster, some might even say it’s already dead, or at least on the way there.
But if we look at similar events in the social media timeline — from the rise and fall of Friendster, MySpace, Google+, Tumblr, Vine and many others that walked the same path — the space and all those in it are probably just changing. But what is it changing into? For some pundits, it’s transforming into what he calls the “recommendation media.”
Here, the main mode of content distribution is no longer users’ network or social graph. Instead, content is shared through centralised algorithms. These are designed to attract the most attention, bring forth the most emotion, and to produce the most engagement. It’s a battle of what’s the best thing to watch, read, or listen to. And the winner gets all the views.
Harvey_Rabbit t1_j2wxegi wrote
Can I pay to have my algorithm maximize my happiness instead of someone else's profit. I'd legit pay for an news feed that showed me all the things I'd be interested in without feeding into all the things that are bad for my mental health.