At some point, the social media industry started measuring everything.

Metrics became a god.

Even the *amount* of metrics you were measuring became a selling feature.

And nobody was willing to challenge the metrics! Its value was self-explanatory (supposedly).

That attitude started filtering down to every crevice of product.

It got so bad, there were companies like Klout helping end users measure their core metrics!

And of course, who could forget influencers buying followers?

@atomicpoet agreed!

"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things" - #TerryPratchett

@atomicpoet
Great response. I'd add that those metrics translate to dollars for advertisement buys, then product engagement, etc.

Human communities have been cash-colonized. We're all consumers, so why block hate speech? The ultra rich feel untouchable?

Don't know if this is overly cynical, but I sometimes I think the companies behind optimization technologies cloak this reality by characterizing targeted ads as empathy.

Just thinking out loud, and hope I'm not bumming anyone out!

@atomicpoet Surely it was simply when advertising revenue became the more important part.

If its free your the product, in this case your the target audience. Communicating with friends, colleagues and others becomes secondary to the needs of the advertisers.

All of this is evident on twitter right now with Musk trying desperately to sell his changes to advertisers ignoring all the noise coming from the user base and that is seeing them flock to other platforms.

@atomicpoet This reminds me of Ivan Illich: If a human initiative crosses a certain threshold, it will first destroy what it was intended to do, and then it will become a threat to society.

As an example, cars were designed to reduce distances, but now they multiply them because they are the only valid mode of transportation; cities are designed to accommodate them. Currently, cars are preventing people from walking.

@atomicpoet those kind of e-peen metrics have been a thing since before the internet. There were "post counters" back on the first days of compuserve. Remember Eternal September?

My answer would be once something awful became a thing. For better and worse, it had a ripple effect that is still felt on the internet in a very bad way. Without Something Awful, we don't get stuff like 4chan and gamer gate and such down the road.