Hey Facebook — Ya Lost 20,000,000 of Me – Daily Kos

At first social media felt like connection. We shared with friends, family, old classmates, made new friends, shared projects and mile stones, dumb jokes, and gossip.  Even better was reconnecting with people we had not seen in decades around our digital campfire. Popularity required the platforms to become enormous.  There were servers to be paid for, the investors expected returns, and staff needed to be paid. So the creators had the machine measure attention, note reaction, and examine how long  and what we looked at.  Our own content became the platform’s data for engagement monetization. And the platforms evolved and evolved and evolved, not because some evil genius wanted the destruction of civilization, but because the systems naturally optimized toward whatever kept people staring at the screen longest.  And demolition is profitable only for a few. And the crazy thing is that fear, anger, identity, validation, outrage, nostalgia, desire, or really anything that gets a rise out of you has become the true currency of attention. Our feed stopped feeling like connection when we didn’t provide acceptable or enough content, or did not respond to predictive patterns the machine understands.  Then my feed went off like a schizophrenic psychological confetti
Read More