The internet runs on ads.
Ad companies pay for all the “free” popular social media we use. Ad companies dictate to social media what their clients want their ads to be associated with, not associated with, and drive media of all kinds to push inflammatory and click-bait content that drives engagement and views. It’s why you indirectly can’t swear, talk about suicide, drugs, death, or violence. Sure, you technically can unless ToS prohibits it, but if companies tell their ad hosts they don’t want to be associated with someone talking about guns, the content discussing guns gets fewer ads, fewer ads = less revenue, low-revenue gets pushed to the bottom.
So lowbrow political rage bait, science denialism, and fake conspiracies drives people to interact and then gets pushed to the top because it gets ad revenue. Content that delves into critical thought and requires introspection or contemplation languishes.
Ads are destroying society because stupid and rage sells views.
I was thinking about this earlier today.
It’s amazing to me that in my lifetime, ads went from a thing that companies got to do as an extra once they had succes all the way to a thing that runs everything everywhere.
Nowadays if you don’t have ads in some form abusing the algorithm (which is in itself designed to be abused) then you get nowhere.
(Also holy shit this has a lot of comments, seems like people have this on their liver somewhat)