People forget that there a billionaires at the helm of these companies putting their feet on the scale of what is shown.
They are not impartial nor are the benevolent. They have a vested interest in influencing the content people are exposed to. They can hide behind the “social” components and say “we’re innocent here we just show the content people engage with” meanwhile they directly influence what content gets a chance to be interacted with.
it doesn't even matter. I've run a small community at a loss, for "fun", for the better part of a decade and people just go elsewhere when the winds change and they find themselves no longer in an echo chamber they agree with. everyone just wants to shout into the void and be validated and it doesn't even matter who the audience is
I am trying to build a Wikipedia for golf course architecture. Free shared info, genuinely about showing pride in your home club, printable yardage books if people make them…
The biggest response I get is “yea but the info on my course is blank, this sucks.”
I suspect there are only like 10% of folks who are remotely altruistic, and maybe 0.1% that would bother to even quickly edit Wikipedia if they found an error.
The vast majority of social media is carried by a few folks who genuinely want to connect and share things they love. After that the follow along is people critiquing, which is fine (I’m doing it now) but it doesn’t actually build anything.
They are not impartial nor are the benevolent. They have a vested interest in influencing the content people are exposed to. They can hide behind the “social” components and say “we’re innocent here we just show the content people engage with” meanwhile they directly influence what content gets a chance to be interacted with.