Note on How We Lost Communication to Entertainment via ploum.net

But aren’t social networks also communication networks? That’s what I thought. That’s how they historically were marketed. That’s what we all believed during the “Arab Spring.”

But that was a lie. Communication networks are not profitable. Social networks are entertainment platforms, media consumption protocols. Historically, they disguised themselves as communication platforms to attract users and keep them captive.

The point was never to avoid missing a message sent from a fellow human being. The point was always to fill your time with “content.”

We dreamed of decentralised social networks as “email 2.0.” They truly are “television 2.0.”

They are entertainment platforms that delegate media creation to the users themselves the same way Uber replaced taxis by having people drive others in their own car.

FROM:

ploum.net

How We Lost Communication to Entertainment

Source

Communication is a side-effect of the entertainment apparatus that is social media. And entertainment is not a utility, and is not here to benefit or improve you, and you must view it with skepticism.