Personally - I think that this was the moment when silicon valley billionaires without shadow of a doubt understood that they have power what used to be reserved only for state actors. Bonus - for using that power they get fined penny on the dollar at most or just slap on the wrist.
Update: now situation is even worse - states actively buy propaganda with social media companies, making those companies even more rich and influential.
Even the main feed isn't that bad for me. I guess it depends who your friends are and what you click on.
I think it has done more damage to this country than tobacco.
I remember during COVID I saw a number of YouTubers swing from producing normal content into conspiracy shit. Their views ballooned. I saw a nasty feedback loop where the more controversial content received more engagement, hence more ad revenue, leading to more of it being produced.
These platforms are actively degenerating society; there’s a reason the CCP is keeping tight control and reportedly rebalancing things to promote educational creators on China’s.
"Last month 60 popular celebrity gossip sites were closed overnight for corrupting "core socialist values," and a new regulation released in May requires all online news portals to be managed by Communist Party-sanctioned editorial staff."
I don't know what you believe Google changed about YouTube, but I believe it has just made itself worse.
Those greedy billionaires also keep on having ties to right wing nuts. Let's not forget Melon Usk with his suspicious right-arm-raising gestures (having done so twice, which is quite strange when you do the same gesture twice in a row - I mean there can be no doubt about this if you do it twice; twice is an accident?).
If you provide both:
a) a service to earn money from content
b) an algo promoting those videos
then yes, IMHO they pay them directly for the content produced.
- Meta is commissioning or sponsoring rage-bait
- Controversial creators are earning money through Facebook's content monetization program
The title is ambiguous (at first, I thought it was the first case), and that's where the clickbait lies.
No doubt that also the second case is a serious problem, but that's orthogonal to the ambiguity of the title.