Social Networking Sites Are Leeches of Value

Note: This was written on Thursday, September 1, 2022 but never previously published.

As time passes by it becomes clearer how most social networking sites operate. First they claim they are an open space for everyone to communicate, connect, engage in discourse and make society better.

After the user base increases to the point that they become a high traffic content aggregator they start disposing of the users to make the content in there follow just a certain type of narrative usually dictated by the currently promoted values of their country of origin or in the recent times, the values that the disclosed or undisclosed directives of those companies decide to enforce on the platform’s user base even if they go against the behavioral patterns of the majority of the population.

We’ve reached technocratic fascism. Some of us had always considered the possibility of that happening. When you give that much power without counterweights to a reduced group of people, they as individuals or as a group will end up abusing it.

That power has turned a lot of this social networking sites into leeches of their user base. Sucking on their data, their relationships and their content till they are of no use. Never has any of these content aggregators provided the users with any help to create better content. Facebook or YouTube have never created courses focused in cinematography, sound design and engineering, they have never supported and made available editing & processing tools for their users.

They leech of what other companies do on those realms to fill their sites with content and then charge either their users for advertising of that content in the same platform or charge third parties to promote their products on top of their users content, sometimes polluting and competing with the original publication.

This has to stop. It’s not creating any good for the majority. It’s only benefiting the owners of this platforms. The internet can’t depend on ad supported content. We need to find other ways. Not only one, but several ways for us to have healthy ecosystems of creators, spectators, users, publishers and sponsors.