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Which platform?
I find creators and content I like via Twitter, Facebook, Reddit (well, not much anymore), Youtube, Goodreads, Rottentomatoes/Metacritic, Google searches, like six different streaming services, group chats, very rarely via normal broadcast television, and the occasional word of mouth.
TheMotte occasionally, too.
Which of these should I be sending money to to 'thank' for acting as an intermediary for my awareness of some creator and their content?
Like, do I owe a local Movie Theater an ongoing allegiance past my ticket purchase for showing me a movie that I later go on to purchase on a DVD?
The Algorithms are not providing some unique functions that isn't available elsewhere, and the content they're 'curating' is, as stated, nearly infinite.
If these platforms were happy to act as just dumb "show me what I want and help me find other things I want" services, I'd be more tolerant. What they ACT as is "we'll show you what you want, smothered in Ads, then try our damnedest to funnel you to the content we want to show you and keeps your attention as long as possible... while shoving ads into your eyes the whole time."
Its practically hostile design, and I return that hostility with hostility.
Sure. Neither is a gas station or a grocery store or any other service. The fact that you can go to Whole Foods doesn't mean Albertson's isn't providing value. And I guess it's hypothetically possible to contract with General Mills to buy your Lucky Charms directly, just about as impractical as viewers and content creators figuring out how to interact directly without TikTok or Instagram.
With the exception of TheMotte, they all already have very solid business plans. And FWIW, I doubt most of them are basing it on curation or discovery as a fundamental source of value. If anything, their only metric when deciding what to show is whatever scores the highest engagement when they A/B test, which I think you already grok.
You're only burning your own soul, being angry at the world like that. Especially for something that you can very well live without (live everyone pre-2010).
The gas station or grocery store sells me the desired product, takes my money, and gives me a receipt.
If a grocery store also attempted to add random items to my grocery cart that I had to physically remove before I hit the checkout line, because "we algorithmically predicted you'd want to buy this one too!" I would probably go to a different grocery store.
Incidentally Aldi is my favorite Grocery Store because it doesn't play games with putting items on 'sale' or do weird pricing practices with coupons. It provides reasonable quality products at what I can generally expect is the lowest price around, and that's it. I appreciate this commitment to simply providing the goods and not trying to futz with the customer to get them to buy more.
That's the sum total of what I want from my media platforms too.
I hope I don't have to explain why grocery stores putting all the products in one physical place is certainly a greater value-add to me (from a pure logistics standpoint) than youtube attempting to shove random videos into my eyes, when I can go to any website I wish with no effort and find the precise content I want with minimal time investment.
Grocery stores have put trashy magazines, Diet Coke and candy bars in the checkout aisle since time immemorial.
Not Aldi. At least, not so aggressively.
And I have dreamed of setting the magazine rack at the Publix checkout on fire for as long as I can remember.
Someone buys those things, I assume. I've literally never seen someone pick one up.
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checkout aisle =/= grocery cart
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