Comment on When if at all will the social media business model collapse?
originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Step 4 is most likely from a markets perspective and step 2 from a regulatory perspective.
The regulatory landscape is slowly shifting against limitless surveillance as the cost of using the free internet. Free platforms like Reddit and Facebook will struggle if they can’t collect limitlessly. More interestingly for me, portability and interoperability regulations could lead to exoduses from those platforms as people are no longer locked in - there is no reason why you can’t message someone on Signal using Messenger other than Facebook doesn’t want you to. Taking your personalization data from Spotify to Apple Music would mean you didn’t have to start from scratch if you didn’t want to keep paying Spotify. It’s an existential threat to companies that depend on a “data moat.”
From a markets perspective programmatic advertising is (as Cory Doctorow says) a bezzle. It’s a scam. ROI and attribution rely on faithful and accurate data on audiences and reach, in addition to engagement. The major ad platforms have regularly been caught lying about these. To be clear paying for ads on these platforms largely works - that’s not up for dispute and is why the bezzle is successful. The issue is that these platforms are selling targeted ads (I.e. show ads to people we believe want a pair of Nikes) that work BETTER than contextual ads (I.e. show ads to people searching for shoes) and that’s not clear.
ZodiacSF1969@sh.itjust.works 10 months 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 10 months 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.