Instagram is a monopoly that acts like a huge magnet where it is hard to detach. Unclear how it changes. I have always been blown away by the technology behind Amazon but Insta might be even better.
Everyone knows its a deep dark sinkhole that we have all been drawn in to. Sometimes it is so hard to put down the phone, just one more scroll please. Now the ads that are subliminally pushed at you from the advertisers that do not say “sponsor” but I assume that Meta makes a piece of everything sold on the platform. We are sold on the clothes. We are sold on the politics. Everything is geared towards what repeat history needs to be grabbed. I bought some dried cherry and nuts from a small farm in Washington State and now im being slammed with other “boutique” farms. I respect it but now that Meta is building the advertising AI behind it, it takes everything to another level.
I used to find it amusing, but now I find it scary. I was at my brother’s and sister-in-law’s house playing with my sister-in-law’s knitting kit, and then, an hour or so later, I got hit up with a knitting pitch from a young guy with his knitting book, sporadically flipping through it to see if I stopped and looked, or clicked obviously. They certainly have figured me out.
In a world where many are trying to create a hard divide, how can anyone see the other side of anything when social media only feeds you the same echo chamber that we all live in? How can anyone see other communities when I am only being fed my interests?
Not sure what the answer is, but the doom scrolling is enlightening and makes me think about the youth doing the same thing, creating an even more divided world. And then, of course, there is the book “Careless People,” about Meta, which gives the reader a glimpse into the dark world of Meta (Facebook). Puts the entire company into an entirely different perspective. It is about one thing and one thing only, money.