Tech giants’ tricks that suck the fun out of social media

Did you ever feel that after browsing the internet, you haven’t really had any fun? Let’s talk about how the internet is becoming boring. As a software engineer with experience in advertising, I’ll try to suggest why.

The tech giants’ goals

The goals of social media is not for us to have fun. Ha! Why would they even care if we have fun? They have but a single goal: to make as much profit as possible.

We just want to be entertained

We’re browsing social media to have fun, to unwind, to catch up. What we get is a bit of that, and a lot of upsetting, controversial and repeating content. What’s causing it?

Trick #1: Tech giants are giving too much control to the AI

It is long known that the “feed” we are given by social media is chosen by machine learning algorithms. The AI’s idea of success is how many ads you’re clicking, and better yet, whether you’re buying the advertised product. Yes, they know.

A bit about how this works: Let’s say you click an ad in Facebook. When the website is loaded, the “Facebook pixel” is called — a spy agent by Facebook, in the form of a 1x1 invisible image, installed by the website’s owners. Afterwards, more events may be reported to Facebook, like when there was a purchase.

When there’s more and more control is in the hands of the algorithms that developers themselves admit they do not fully understand, is it really a wonder why us the users, having fun, is not the main goal?

Trick #2: We are shown more controversial content to keep us engaged

Did you notice that dislikes started disappearing from YouTube? Facebook never even had dislikes. Neither did Instagram, nor TikTok.

Where are the dislikes?

Let’s look at dislikes from the User Experience point of view:

Our engagement as users

When content has a lot of dislikes, we know it’s likely of low quality, or that it is controversial, and we are less likely to read or watch it. On the other hand, when the same content has no dislikes, or if we are not shown the dislike ratio, we will try to consume that controversial content. Who is this good for? The tech giants. Who’s getting less quality content? Us, the users.

“Friday” by Rebecca Black, then and now

Our reaction

Let’s say we already consumed some content that we didn’t like. If there’s option to dislike it, and if the dislike will be visible, we’ll dislike it and move on. We will feel that our feelings are validated by other people who also disliked that content, when we see the dislike counter.

Now let’s say there’s no option to dislike, or maybe there is, but the dislike counter is hidden. We may move on to the next thing with a bitter taste in our mouth, but… What if this is something that we feel strongly about? What if the content upset us? With no dislike counter, we no longer feel validated. So we go to the comment section. We may comment, or “like” the comments that we agree with. In the comments section we will be exposed to *more* content that we don’t agree with, and we also can’t dislike it.

The angry face is counted as a reaction, same as a “like”

Facebook, as always, took it all one step further, when they decided to count the bad reactions (sad and angry) with the good ones.

So again — who is this good for? The tech giants. They squeeze more content out of us if we comment, and even if we don’t, we’ve spent more time browsing! That’s a win for them. And who’s getting a less fun experience? Us, the users.

Trick #3: Performance improvements make the content repetitive

Disclaimer: this one is a theory, which from my experience, seems very likely.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results — probably not Albert Einstein

In some social media platforms, the same content is shown to us again and again and again. For example, the YouTube main page shows almost the same content before and after a refresh. This, of course, makes browsing much more boring.

Why does this happen? My guess is — performance improvements.

Querying a trained Machine Learning algorithm — the one that suggests content that we’re likely to click ads in — may be a quick action, but, do it for every visit of every user, and you get some heavy work for the server. Caching — storing old results for the next time this user visits, is much lighter on the server. And so we get to see the same content suggested to us repeatedly.

The tech giants don’t owe us new content, but still, when the quality of a product we use for years deteriorates, it is disappointing.

I remember simpler days, when lolcats ruled the internet

So what can we do?

To be honest, I don’t think we can “make the internet great again". Nevertheless, there are still a few small things you can do when you browse social media:

• Recognize the controversial content and skip it. Personally, my feed is filled with sad stories, complaints, and controversial topics. I try to skip this kind of content when I recognize it.
• Don’t read the comment section for too long.
• Engage with the content that makes you feel better. Go like and comment on that meme that made you laugh.
• Engage less with content that makes you feel worse.
• Go straight to the groups and creators’s pages that you’d like to see. If you haven’t seen posts from your favorite creator in a while, it’s time to pay them a visit, instead of hoping their content will appear in your feed.
• Don’t use angry or sad reactions for content that you agree with. Facebook’s algorithm is less likely to suggest posts with a lot of angry or sad reactions to users. Use one of the other reactions instead.
• Don’t use angry or sad reactions for content that you *don’t* agree with. Facebook is still more likely to suggest posts with lots of negative reactions, rather than posts with few reactions of any kind. Also, the negative reactions are often shadowed by other reactions.

And most importantly, every once in a while, close the social media and do something else to relax and unwind. You deserve it.