Social media is on the decline. Instagram is all ads. No one’s posting on BeReal. TikTok is for influencers. The new place for sharing: group chats.
And yet, after joining Lemmy and Mastodon, I post a lot more.
Like for real!! I was a semi-lurker on reddit. Posted a couple times a year.
I just passed 500 posts on Lemmy.
I’ve found lemmy to be alot less hostile, don’t care about downvotes, but attacking people because of opinions doesn’t sound like a fun time to me
The absence of a running karma total is a surprisingly powerful difference. I do still look back at old posts, and it’s nice when there’s votes, but without the little number next to a name or when I mouse-over a profile, there’s no motivation to be the first in a thread to repost a cliche joke or to ragebait for fake internet points.
I think the “not having to be first” is what is so powerful.
I know that if I comment on a post from a few days ago on a populated community, I’ll likely at least get a reply from OP, if not a bunch of other people finding my comment and replying as well.
It’s like Lemmy is the nice, small-town version of Reddit (which is probably more similar to Gary Indiana).
That’s a bit cruel to Gary, Indiana, don’t you think?
McBane thats the joke.gif
I hated most of those cliche jokes. Here I am looking for real conversation only to be met with thousands of not witty low effort jokes.
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There used to be a bot rating bot on reddit that used those comments to see which bots where actually good. It was useful. I’m hoping someone will make the same on lemmy and go back retroactively to index old comments.
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I think that on some bots it is meant as feedback on its performance but to have 10 users give the same feedback is kinda annoying. Maybe Lemmy can have a feature were humans can approve/disapprove bot performance that doesn’t involve upvote/downvote. It would only be available to bot accounts in the site’s UI. Could possibly expand it’s functionality to something more useful. Or just use the voting system because it’s already in place.
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Lemmy definitely has a more chill, human vibe than I got with Reddit, given how overrun the latter was with vast armies of shills, bots, alt right trolls, etc.
Not that it’s all rainbow-pooping unicorns frolicking through flowery meadows here but at least the dick comments tend to be much rarer and often a one off for the person making them.
Opinions are fine. Being disingenuous/an asshole at the same time as having an opinion definitely provokes smackdowns, even on lemmy.
Same goes for 9gag but that site is different
Huh, when I clicked on your profile it says 0 posts…
Profiles are rarely accurate. I viewed the same profile from two different instances (yes the same profile, not the same username from two different instances) and they didn’t even have the age of thr account the same. One was 2 years, one was 2 months. So I wouldn’t trust that. I’d only trust it if you’re logged into that very instance.
In this case it’s more likely to be because that’s one of my alts. This is my main.
Read the bio. That’s not my main. This is.
Part of the reason is Lemmy’s default sorting algorithm for comments, “Hot”, addresses reddit’s biggest flaw, which is that earlier comments snowballs with upvotes, so it buries late-comers to conversations, leading to the rat-race of everyone trying to get their funny one-liners in as early as possible for maximum karma (which also isn’t a thing here.)
The “Active” default sort for posts also means that comments are a lot more concentrated to what people are actually talking about and posts tend to be stickier. (also, botting upvote is a lot harder on Lemmy, since it’s easy to bot upvotes, it’s a lot harder to fake real conversations in comments. )
In fact, it is pointless to comment at all past like 4 hours on any post on reddit since it will just sit unread for hours, but here you can comment 1 day after a post and still have people talking to you.
for me, I was motivated to make this my first post because I want to help solve the death of content issue we still have. it’s gotten quite a lot of attention. I think that anywhere bigger, anything of relevance would have already been posted by the time I see it
Also, for me, it’s the fact I do not feel my data and privacy are being siphoned, sold, and fingerprinted on this platform. Another factor is that I feel the people and interactions are pure and authentic, rather than astroturfed and ambiguous. That may change as the fedicerse grows, but for now it is bringing me back of the older days of the internet.
For what it’s worth, that was a big reason why I moved as well, everyone here actually cares. ❤️
You bring up one advantage I see from Lemmy. Even though I’ve seen this article posted before (I think by L4Sbot in this technology community), the nature of de-centralized content means that cross-posting onto various servers is actually encouraged to get input from a variety of users from different communities and configs (for example, people who have disabled viewing bot-account posts).
On Reddit, people would be quick to say “boooooo repoooost”, but I’ve not seen that too much of that, just a few complaints of “there’s too much orange guy and muskrat in my feed”.
Same here. For me it’s because it feels smaller more often instead expecting to be buried.
I just want the communities I post in to grow. Just trying to do my part to keep people engaged and encourage others to do the same.
I comment about as much as I did on reddit, but I feel like I see less negative replies. It doesn’t seem to matter what I’d post on there, somebody somewhere would have something shitty to say. It’s not my fault society can’t accept my seal clubbing hobby.
If you want to go clubbing with 90s phenom and signer of the hit song “Kiss from a Rose”, then you go for it! You are accepted here ❤️
Absolutely, I post much more here because I know actual people will actually read it and may actually respond like they would to an actual human. It’s like the old days of the internet.
Because people here are nice
Yeah look I don’t get slurs thrown at me or people abusing the “send help” button. So that’s a bonus.
Oh yeah the reddit care team. Fuckers.
It’s great that they have that. But man it got abused so easily, and it felt kind of silly that you could actually block it. I remember getting it after saying the most middest of takes.
I honestly don’t know whether it’s good that they have it or not.
There must be a myriad of ways that reddit could support the mental health of redditors which would be more effective.
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Hey me too! Just the Lemmy side (was never into twitters whole thing) but I actually post stuff here, even if it’s just cross posting.
I always used an alt to post on Reddit and did so very infrequently. I think I posted maybe 3 things on the 4 years on Reddit?
I comment a lot more, and have posted a ton more (even without removing the posts! And yea, 5 is a ton more since it’s in the last 2 months rather than 4years!)
I don’t even clear my comment history as a compulsive thing (I changed me behavior somewhat, to allow for this) because I don’t want to remove activity from the platform. I know it needs me to contribute so I do!
I do, too, but it’s out of duty and I’ll stop when other people pick up the slack.
Found the bot /s
The concept of “influencer” as a career needs to die a quick death.
it’s fancy speak for “salesman”
Ooo it’s the equivalent of “side hustle” just being a 2nd job.
Fancy speak for “cheap salesman who has a large network” /0.5s
Wha…What?! So you’re saying I’m not a BOSS BABE?!
I’m glad I don’t really get these references. Tells me I’ve avoiding some of the right bullshit.
I call them peddlers
I mean I think it’s a fine career, it’s the name that’s dumb.
For the most part they’re just entertainers. The “influencer” name suggests way more than should be.
Entertainers are supposed to be entertaining though.
These people have all the “entertainment” value of a late-night infomercial at best. “Oooh, watch me get excited about unboxing this item. Whatever could have Disney sent me this week?”
The worst problem is that these influencers do gain huge amounts of followers, but rarely fact-check or do hard sciences needed to ya know, give information to viewers? See Linus Tech Tips and the whole crap they’re into right now.
You are watching the wrong persons on youtube.
Aaaand: The thing you think is unfunny might be the funbiest thing since forver for another.Exactly. And the fact that people have large amounts of followers mean that plenty of people find them entertaining.
I mean, they’re mostly indie and could probably easily be compared to stand-up comedians.
Which if we look at it’s history is a very crash-and-burn career itself. I think a lot of them are entertaining. But it’s certainly a saturated market where it can feel like a needle in a haystack at times.
And really, the issue with LTT, is an issue. But keep in mind on the internet we largely mock news sites in general for being uninformative and many being glorified blogs. It’s not as uncommon as we unfortunately may think.
But basically a lot of what is souring you on influencers, either has already happened in other careers or is currently happening to others as well, just we don’t think about it as much.
Well “entertaining” is subjective. If these people weren’t entertaining, they wouldn’t have so many followers.
There are absolutely a ton of people out there taking advantage of certain people and manipulating them as opposed to actually being entertaining, but that’s not an “influencer” problem, that’s just a people problem. That happens in every industry with human interaction.
Plenty of influencers just post content they think their followers will like and use that following to make money as well. And a lot of the time, their followers actually enjoy the things they advertise.
And the great thing is if you don’t like the concept, you can just not follow them.
If you were objectively correct and that folks didn’t find them entertaining, there wouldn’t be the industry and they wouldn’t have their followers. It’s the same phenomenon that makes reality TV such a big money maker.
Reality TV is a money maker because you barely need any writers.
Reality TV was a reaction to the (repeated) writers strikes. Content, no matter the quality, sells eyeballs. Quality almost doesn’t matter in practice. As such, shitty TV that is poorly written makes money because their costs are so low. Not necessarily because people find them entertaining.
They’re the McDonalds of Hollywood. Low effort, low cost content designed to fill up televisions but keep audiences with “something” between the major shows people watch.
And no. Reality TV isn’t “real” either, its just unscripted, low effort television. Its roughly WWE where characters (and their actors) are given much leeway into the shots / script because they don’t want to pay real writers to make an actual script.
It has a lot of eyeballs. That’s the whole point. They were extremely popular shows. I don’t understand how you’re just swiping that part under the rug as if it didn’t matter. If no one watched them, they’d stop. They watch them because many people found it entertaining to watch. I can’t believe you’re trying to create a conspiracy that a bunch of people watched a show because they… didn’t enjoy it?
Dude, this is well known Hollywood information.
Most of the producers who craft reality TV story lines are not affiliated with a union and will not be affected by a strike. The genre also tends to be cheaper and less time-consuming to produce than scripted TV, making it an ideal alternative during past work stoppages.
Hardly a conspiracy theory. Reality TV is about cheapness, getting non-union work, fewer writers (or even no writers at all), and having far cheaper production.
Both things can be true
Most TV screen hours are in the background so a lot of shows are just filler to keep the schedule full
Like they could be a video journalist or a nature photographer or a lifestyle model. All those would be more descriptive than just influencer.
I prefer "content creators. " Sametimes they can be very educational or entertaining. (I watch a lot of comedy, travel, and home workout content.)
You don’t like the Z-list celebrities?
It’s a double edged sword. I do like some of the niche content the industry has created. I like coffee and I get a lot of indepth coffee analysis from folks who likely wouldn’t be able to spend the time doing so if they needed “real” jobs. I think it’s the ones where there’s no actual valuable content that is what gets people annoyed. I don’t understand how someone can just play video games in front of a camera. Or where they’re famous for their personality.
Why though? You don’t have to be their customer. But clearly lot of people are.
Talking to real friends more interesting than arguing with strangers? Shareholders flummoxed! News at 11.
Hey, I take offense to that! I’m going to write a vitriolic response to your seemingly-normal-but-different-viewpoint-than-mine opinion where I’ll use non-applicable slurs and misinformation and then call you dumb if you post a sensible reply!
tfw you just stand on the sides and then meme on what’s happening with a lame joke instead of contributing your two cents on the socioeconomic practices that are happening in the US that are currently choking its working class to death
lmaooooooo gottem
Hey, I take offence to your office! I’m going to write a nonsensical response that parallels your comment where I’ll use no sources and not really make any point whatsoever!
… real friends …
I don’t understand.
Like text but with noises and fleshy.
Edit: sometimes they congratulate you on the anniversary of exiting your mother’s birth canal.
Gross. And Gross.
Flummoxed is such a choice word
It’s kinda fetch
I’ve seen the birth of it in my lifetime, I’ll see the death of it in my lifetime. Way to go, evolution!
I was in high school when facebook went live, just out of curiosity how old were you?
I was in college and I still do not understand it. My friends were like dude there’s girls on it and you can poke them. But there’s girls out in the real world. Now it’s the reverse where meeting people on the internet is more normal than meeting IRL.
So cruel
It had the potential to be good. But as with everything, once capitalisms tendrils flowed through it the benefit to anyone except those wishing to reap a profit is gone. I’m hoping the fediverse gets the support it needs because infrastructure is expensive and we have something good here
Social media in general is in the following stage of Enshitification:
- Launch
- Growth at all costs, user focus
- Use size to bring advertisers
- Gradually shift focus to advertisers and money bringers
- Ensure users are way too invested to quit
- >> Sell out <<
It’s no surprise that people only end up seeing “carefully curated” content, it’s what “sells”, or rather, ensures people stay in the stupid app. From TFA: “While sharing has tailed off, consuming content hasn’t slowed”
I have an Insta account for some of the part time 3D printing I do, but since I’m not a “content creator”, my stuff has almost zero reach. Whenever I open the app, it’s roughly 1:1:1 posts of “recommended”, someone I actually follow, advert. 2/3 of everything shown to me is stuff I didn’t ask for, not to mention when the advertises are actual scams or fucking pyramids
I first heard the term ‘enshitification’ on the last episode of On the Media. Perfect description
It was coined by Doctorow and his article about it is very popular on the fediverse.
Yup, here’s the tasty salsa - https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
I redownload insta like a month ago because I thought fuck it. Other than reels from old friends from highschool, it’s all adds and the same regurgitated memes and stand up comics.
It was creepy that after nearly 4 years of being inactive it knew that I liked golf, and drink too much.
Those platforms are business media now, not social media anymore.
This is really interesting to think about. On my photography IG the one users who are still having good reach are the ones who are promoting their patreon/presets/editing services, are constantly trying to earn money in some way and are posting a million reels every day.
More casual photographers like me are getting zilch. I used to get 1000 likes on 95% of my stuff with some going viral. Now I get 200 if I’m lucky, my reach in general is in the hole and I refuse to spend hours editing reels and begging for the algorithms attention. I’m close to shutting it down but I help mod a page right now so I’m hanging on for a bit yet.
The fediverse, while still social media, has a level of authenticity unrivaled by most major social medias in my opinion. Hopefully it stays that way!
Has any communication system managed to do that? Once certain types of people catch the scent of profit, they tear the medium apart searching for every penny of it.
Letters became junk mail. Email became spam. Newspapers and magazines became mostly ads and shilled content. Television became for-profit news and reality content.
That authenticity is just going to make it more appealing to astro-turf.
we need to shitpost more. a neighborhood that is high in crime does not appeal to advertisers. like north korea, they live in paradise whilst convincing the rest of the world that it’s a shithole.
Weirdest NK take I’ve seen
Weirdest NK take I’ve seen
I think it’s kinda true for like…a couple very specific people there.
ah i guess that’s in the process of changing. you can see this happening right now. more right-wing memes, more “look at this cool movie/toy/outfit… i found. it’s really me, a normal human being just like you!”
Lol I would bet the majority of that crap is from just normal people.
yes. normal people getting paid to post that.
Seems extremely unlikely. There’s very little reach on here compared to elsewhere. It’s not easily quantifiable nor can it be easily verified. It’s extremely easy to hack metrics. There’s no business sense to pay someone for posts on the fediverse yet. Don’t be paranoid and don’t become conspiratorial.
Edit: added “yet” because those things could possibly change.
Anyone who disagrees with you is a bot amiright?
… wait, am I a bot?
We’re all bots.
beep boop
Bad bot.
I also noticed how my social media usage (even on Lemmy and Mastodon) is consistently declining, I haven’t opened the clients I use for either platform in days (or possibly more than a week). It’s bad because I was pretty invested in the fediverse, but it’s good because now I can actually do something productive, or even go outside.
It’s not bad… it’s actually healthy. I think that feeling that you must post on social media isn’t really good for the head.
Go on social media when you feel like it, but it’s best if the default is to not use social media.
Good point
Agreed, this experiment should be able to last by itself without feeling obligated to post something. If that’s the case then it’s failed.
Same. Good stuff.
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Usenet and freenet haven’t changed at all. /List to list servers. Scroll until u find what u want Cake
I would think dalnet is still up. Those fuckers are like cockroaches. Only a nuke will take them out.
Yep I’d be surprised if not
Discord is better than IRC imo. I used IRC for a VERY long time and Discord was the one that finally killed it for me. We’ll see if it lasts. I guess if they kill themselves (and they keep trying to), IRC will still be there waiting. Used to be on Rizon!
Discord is sooo awful imo. Every server has annoying “rule bots” or people constantly changing the look/feel of the channels or trying to engage you with @all or @channel (which you can ignore but it’s still annoying)… even the more technical ones have the same vibe. IRC is so much easier to communicate in IMO.
No app better defines the changing nature of social media than Instagram. The app started as a digital scrapbook — a place to keep up with real-world connections, close friends, and family. While other networks had more users (Facebook) or generated more news (Twitter), Instagram seemed to define the ideal form of this era of social media. Instagram became a verb, an aesthetic, and a generational signifier.
huUURP! BLAAaahhriifgghhh. . .
Garbage marketing platform dies horribly. Thousands of clueless “journalists” bereft.
Insta-gram
I thought it originated as a marketplace for single servings of drugs.
I still visit Reddit but I no longer engage in any way, other than reading comments. No up/down voting, not commenting, no reporting spam. Nothing but reading with multiple layers of ad-blocking.
PS: the overall quality/value has dropped precipitously
I deleted my main Reddit account but still find myself going back there occasionally for specific topics. For example, I haven’t found a goof place on Lemmy to ask travel questions.
place on Lemmy to ask travel questions.
Good luck. One poster would ask if you like sex and travel, then tell you to “Go and get fucked.”
Another would accuse you of being a bourgeois lib who is killing the planet with your capitalist excesses.
Another would go on a rant about privilege and how your very ability to ask such questions in a public space speaks to your total lack class consciousness and your ignorance of “The Movement” or something like it.
In short, check out Vang Vieng in Laos and have a great time.
Where the fuck are y’all hanging out?? All I see are memes and Star Trek…
oddly specific, but go on…
People like this infuriate me. They don’t clue in that travel decreases the fear and antipathy toward other cultures.
Did you not enjoy your tenth fight video of the day?
I read AITA on Lemmy via a bot, that is the last vestige of Reddit I haven’t dropped.
No one’s posting on BeReal
Nobody has heard of BeReal
Also, if no one is posting on social media, then what the hell are we all doing right now then?
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The internet has been almost entirely enshittified by large corporations and government overreach. I really do wish there was a way to get back to Web 1.0 of mostly user-generated, self-hosted content, without the slow internet speeds or crappy web design motifs.
Might be possible if everyone is forced underground due to adblockers possibly getting killed off.
Lemmy is one of the ways back to internet 1.0.
Web 2.0 was the advent of user generated content. Web 1.0 was not. It was site-generated content for the most part. Some forums possibly. But it was extremely static and was very poor way to find user generated content.
I blame javascript. If it weren’t for people fucking with the time travel machine WE’D be the ones in the original timeline, and no one would have to suffer in this timeline where javascript got invented.
Let’s focus on Rampart.
No. Only MY movies are allowed to be promoted on Lemmy.
Not during the strike they’re not…
Well, not by me… but somebody else.
My Facebook is only memes, only from the large meme pages, not the ones I like that I have to check manually since they’ll never end up in my feed. And news articles.
It started with Facebook just hiding what your friends are posting. It still happens that someone shares a photo once a year or so, but I will never get shown it. I just browse my friend’s profiles manually.
That was extremely dissatisfying about Facebook. I’d see an endless stream of crap from people that I barely knew and didn’t care about at all, and then when I’d look at a profile of someone I actually knew and did want to keep up with, I’d see posts about significant and interesting things that happened in their lives which Facebook never showed me. I tried to get them to stop showing me irritating posts about politics - unfollow people, block people, mark “show less posts like this”, then it would come up with more political posts from people I didn’t even recognize. Meanwhile, oh, colleague got married…. sure, just never show me that post and show me 15 idiotic political memes instead.
and we’d voice our opinion AS THESE CHANGES WERE HAPPENING and people would cry “things change you just don’t like change hur durr i’m so progressive”
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I’m assuming you’re just here studying nerds for your next blockbuster where you’re playing Ada Lovelace or something.
… I don’t know what you’re talking about.
On a purely coincidentally note, how likely would you be in watching an Ada Lovelace biopic? No reason, just asking.
Depends. Is it written by Sydney Padua?
🤐
You’d better make this happen or some anonymous nerd on the Internet will be marginally disappointed, and I don’t think you want that on your hands.
With you playing her? 100%.
I don’t consider this or reddit social media. I don’t know anyone, nor do I care to.
Instead it is like a collection of forums since forever like in the bbs days.
I pick and choose what rooms to go in and learn something. But it isn’t about me, or staying connected. You know, the social part.
This and Reddit are 100% social media. Right now, writing this, we are socializing on this media.
Maybe I’m wrong, but this is how I’ve viewed it for years
No, I don’t think so. Not in the sense that social media became defined. Web forum, and bbs rooms, existed long before the term. The key difference and turning point was removal of anonymity, and the concept of self promotion. I know they are similar and overlap, but the evolution from one to the other did occur. Reddit and Lemmy still have more in common with news aggregation and forums than say a Titter, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. Most of the content here is in reference to something else, end then discussion are on that.
nah. Social Media has a sort of implied entertainment attached to it, which is not a good description of, e.g., this very discussion. This -can- be social media if you’re just lurking, but for us conversing here this is now a forum. We’re sharing thoughts and discussing.
This is literally social media lmao
No, I don’t think so. Not in the sense that social media became defined. Web forum, and bbs rooms, existed long before the term. The key difference and turning point was self promotion, and the removal of anonymity. I know they are similar and overlap, but the evolution from one to the other did occur. Reddit and Lemmy still have more in common with news aggregation and forums than say a Titter, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. Most of the content here is in reference to something else, end then discussion are on that.
If you look up the history of the term the turning point is definitely the change to having real personas and real people connect. That is where the “social” part comes from. The term “social networking”. But we are not social networking here. Do you actually know anyone here? Do you want to?
preach. If anyone wants an example of what is meant by “forum” if you’re too accustomed to modern takes on it, visit places like news.ycombinator.com or just browse reddit using old.reddit.com and go in some less “popular” subs that aren’t just people posting random pics and videos.
That’s basically how most of Instagram works and is what the article is about. No one knows folks on those platforms either. They aren’t “social” anymore. No one shares anything personal, it’s all “content” created for millions of followers by influencers and the like. This is probably more like social media than current platforms are. It’s closer to what social media was when it started.
I see your point, but I only used Reddit for a long time and the difference was the anonymity, so it’s social media but minus the personal brand.
This is why I hate when “journalists” write titles like these because they’re just stupid bullshit. Why not just say “social media use is in severe decline”. Oh, because it’s not clickbait, that’s why.
Lemmy isn’t social media, it’s content aggregation, like reddit used to be
Might as well say Instagram isn’t social media either, nor is Facebook or Twitter. Social media is just a platform where one of the biggest parts of it is the commenting system. Its a social media platform for content aggregation. The commenting makes it social.
There are tons of “but Lemmy isn’t social media because blah blah blah!!!” comments here by the kids who think they are too cool to be lumped in with the instagram / facebook crowd.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
if someone posts on social media and nobody reads it … does the poster even exist?
I too enjoy yelling into the void. Sometimes it yells back 💪😎💪
Trees in forests breathe quantum sighs of relief
…or do they?
It’s the sound of one hand clapping
it’s interesting how many comments show that people like to read the headline and are content with that to form an opinion. literally the first paragraph says that it’s not “THERE ARE NO POSTS” but it says that the “feed is swamped by a combination of perfectly curated photos and professionally created content.” - the problem is that the paid content creators have become GOOD. so many of them really look like they are just opinions and casual mentions of movies/clothes/…things. viral marketing is really at a point where so many fronts that have been established have been broken down in the guise of “irony” or “sarcasm”. “I’m only buying the Barbie merch ironically” etc.
it’s interesting how many comments show that people like to read the headline
I read articles about India landing on the moon, ancestors of humans nearly dying out, tech employees being dissatisfied in Austin, etc. I don’t care about social media enough to read an article. That’s probably a lot of people here.
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I do check Google News daily on the web from my computer. And I also read news stories posted to Lemmy. I also have a bunch of RSS feeds on my phone, but that’s typically nerd computer stuff unless someone happens to comment on a news article on their blog.
It’s not just about content creators becoming good though, the article also explains how the algorithm pushes that content over others.
Granted, the quality of the content is still a big part of it, another point it makes is that people refrain from posting things because it’s not “good enough” compared to others.
Isn’t that what the summary above pretty much says with even less words?
