What is an "ad", though? Is it just the sponsored content, or is it all the crap that they shovel into your timeline "recommended for you" and "you may like this too" and all the thirst traps promoting their onlyfans?
I was hanging around with some Roller Derby players around 2005. It was the days of MySpace and such, right? And I was heavily into that, and I made a lot of friends on MySpace, and then I was sort of intimidated when one of the rollergirls expressed her naked hatred for men who "collect women on the Internet like so many fucking butterflies". Anyway, there was a man and wife I was chatting with, and I mentioned MySpace, and the man said "why should I use MySpace and social media? Why?" and I launched into some optimistic explanation, and he interrupted me to shout "it's just to get spammed! They are just going to spam us!" and I paused and said, well, yes, that's true.
So I think that is the fundamental purpose of social media platforms: you're signing up to be spammed. Any pretense of keeping up with friends, family or the news headlines is a flimsy excuse. You're going to get spammed, by hook or by crook, and the sky's the limit.
I was hanging around with some Roller Derby players around 2005. It was the days of MySpace and such, right? And I was heavily into that, and I made a lot of friends on MySpace, and then I was sort of intimidated when one of the rollergirls expressed her naked hatred for men who "collect women on the Internet like so many fucking butterflies". Anyway, there was a man and wife I was chatting with, and I mentioned MySpace, and the man said "why should I use MySpace and social media? Why?" and I launched into some optimistic explanation, and he interrupted me to shout "it's just to get spammed! They are just going to spam us!" and I paused and said, well, yes, that's true.
So I think that is the fundamental purpose of social media platforms: you're signing up to be spammed. Any pretense of keeping up with friends, family or the news headlines is a flimsy excuse. You're going to get spammed, by hook or by crook, and the sky's the limit.