# Devolving Social Networks By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-04-11 The idea of social network sites on the internet makes sense. Facebook helps you stay connected with your friends. Twitter helps you stay informed about issues from those you care about. LinkedIn helps you find a job and connect with work colleagues. The list goes on and on. However, we all know that all social networking platforms have ventured far from these ideal use cases. This is primarily due to the algorithms deployed within these platforms that incentivize engagement and attention to generate ad revenue. These algorithms create games where people are rewarded with views and popularity when they find ways to get their content promoted by the algorithm. Essentially, the algorithm is in a constant loop to find and define what content people will engage with so others can replicate it. In short, the algorithm is an aggregated tastemaker and trendsetter driven by not what the future could or should be, but what others have already done. Instead of a person or group of people pushing things forward, the algorithm is always looking backward because it only cares about generating ad revenue. This is the downfall of all these social networking platforms and why they devolve from their lofty ideals. I doubt anyone created these platforms with the intent for them to devolve as they have, but eventually, they needed to generate revenue. So, they turned to ads as no one was willing to pay for a subscription to a platform with no one else on it. As they attracted more people with a "free" service, they needed some way to keep people engaged but also able to find relevant content. Algorithms to search through the content started, and then the scientists began to discover what kind of search results generated more engagement. The rest of the devolved history will be documented as the attention economy craze of the first half of the 21st century. The question is how does one create a social networking platform that doesn't devolve away from its original intention? It isn't through carelessly ignoring economic forces and the need to pay the bills. Those idealistic days are over and dead. Humans need to synthesize new models to facilitate progress. #### Related Items [[Society]] [[Networking]] [[Machine Learning]] [[Progress]] [[Metamodernism]]