Why Platforms Aren’t Your Friends
Platforms, like other systems, serve the people who profit from them.
In their unending pursuit of more and more advertising dollars, platforms’ appetites for ever-increasing amounts of human attention have become voracious. And that appetite must be sated, regardless of the side effects or consequences.
As content creators, writers, podcasters, YouTubers, and others are uniquely positioned to help platforms attract attention to their apps. But our interests will never be completely aligned with those of the platform owners.
In this story, I’m going to talk about who large systems, like platforms, actually serve, and what that means for content creators working on those platforms. Let’s go!
A different kind of system
When I practiced criminal law in northern Manitoba, Canada, it became apparent pretty quickly that the system was pretty deeply dysfunctional. Lawyers were inexperienced and overworked at best and ineffective at worst. Judges frequently didn’t know the law and, when they did, often ignored it. Sentencing hearings were rushed, bail hearings were delayed — sometimes for literal weeks at a time — timely trials were an illusion, and court orders were mostly ignored without consequence.
