As far as I understand how things like facebook or reddit work they:

  1. offer an unpaid service to mass consumer

  2. harvest data of the people who use the service

  3. offer paid advertisement space to companies

  4. companies buy advertising because the vast data promise precise targeting

  5. precisely targeted ads convert into sales for companies

  6. the ROI (profit gained to cost of ads) when buying social media ads is greater than ROI on tv or whatever other ads

  7. social media expand on the profits gained from ad space sold to companies

  8. social media corp announces a brand new feature and we return to point 1)

Which step is the closest to breaking? Where are limits of growth and who hits them first? Is there a cap on marketing budgets beyond which companies won’t afford social media ads and tech corps won’t afford expansion and maintenance? A cap on how much data (=how precise ads) can they harvest from us? A lower threshold of general wealth below which ads won’t convert into more profit because people are too poor? A breaking point of enshittification at which user count (=ad visibility) plummets?

The recent apeshit of tech companies after the raised interest rates made me feel that the entire thing is quite fragile and ripe for falling… But I’m not a financial advice so maybe I’m completely clueless.

  • ZodiacSF1969
    11·
    1 year ago

    I think messaging is more likely to see progress made on this front. I don’t see regulations forcing Spotify to allow for their personalization mechanisms to be transferable and that doesn’t really make sense why they should have to, while messaging I can see happen even if only due to popular demand.

    • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 year ago

      It’s a more nuanced argument to be sure. The premise is that your music preferences are traits and knowledge about you that Spotify learns when you use their platform, just like how Google learns you like chips and Facebook learns you went to school with Mike. It’s not really fundamentally different to learn about music preferences than it is to learn about shoe preferences, it’s only different in how they’re used.

      When you switch mobile carriers there is a level of interoperability baked in. You keep your number, you can transfer phone contacts from one service to another, etc. Tech companies have everyone convinced that their old tricks are so clever and new that they need new rules, is all.