The app itself can quickly turn into a never-ending scroll of infomercials from ads and accounts if you go beyond your social circle. Even if said accounts are not directly selling a product through the store feature, it's often advertising a desirable lifestyle not your own and general consumerism. How many photos are staged versus candid? This type of content-as-ad imagery is what the app lends itself best to versus any other social media app. Of course, you can just not follow any of these accounts or limit them or have better self control over your time spent there. But, the company is also probably working against your best interests, bottom line and all that...
I really dislike the suggestion "just have better self control". It's you versus an army of machine learning experts all tuning algorithm on personal data about you to learn your weaknesses and bait you into spending more time on the app.
Blaming the consumer ignores the adversarial role that the apps play in our lives.
I agree. I wasn’t trying to place blame merely stating that there are ways to make the experience personal and closed to the people you know only. The sentence following the one you’re referring to was meant to convey your sentiments.
They don't install the apps for the purpose of seeing advertising, and there's no way to opt out of the ads, so I don't think that is a good assessment.
Then I can't message my extended family. I have no way to reach the friends I made in Costa Rica. Some of my business contacts in Europe only use adtech platforms to communicate.
You can't just delete the app. You have to fully opt out of a significant portion of the global ecosystem.
Some of the brightest minds and smartest people go to work for companies which spend every minute of their existence to figure out how to place an ad in front of our eyes for 1 more second.
