How do you know that? Do you know how their software works, really works? How they don’t work? Only then are you qualified to say whether there’s a solution but “they are afraid to do so”, or there can be none.

I’m a technologist. I’m with you that disalignment of users’ attention and advertising profits are root causes of social ills we are seeing in mass social media. But I still don’t see you offering any possible solution other than whining for politicians to step in. Disillusionment is useless.

Technological problems demand technological solutions. Legal and regulatory ones help but are incomplete at best, completely ineffective at worst in playing whack a mole. I’ve seen this with copyright in my 15 years of work in isoHunt.

And technological solutions can come from anywhere, not just from original platform creators. I for one am not holding my breath for Facebook and Youtube to fix their shit, when I can work on alternative distribution models that can offer potential solutions as competitive advantage. Small startups like mine are free to experiment and tread where ad-driven behemoths dare not go.

Isn’t capitalism grand? Startups become the establishment with too much to lose for drastic change. And the cycle repeats. Truly “move fast and break things” are for startups, though I applaud the great focused agility that tech giants like Apple and Facebook are still exercising.