Comment on I was on social media before web browsers existed. I am Legion.
purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 2 days agoI feel like those platform ideas came initially from people who wanted to build something cool. Something people would use. The ads were a side effect of being part of the tech company.
Now I feel they are built because it’s a way to show ads or harvest data.
suicidaleggroll@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Exactly, the priorities have flipped. It used to be that ads were a necessary evil to fund the development and hosting costs for the service you actually care about and want to provide. Now it seems like the service is the necessary evil that’s only there to justify selling ad space.