<rant>
Swiping felt like the death of dating apps. Dating has always been a numbers game (the more potential partners one interacts with and dates the higher the chances of forming successful relationships). Modern dating apps convert human relationships into catalog browsing, a simplified calculus of human affairs wired to a cash register.

All my LTR in IRL have started offline and with people I knew in some other IRL context. Online dating apps never led anywhere but the bedroom briefly then straight back on the app. That's just me, no knock on people who have formed successful relationships that started online. Or people who just want naked bedroom gymnastics. Or serial daters, or anyone for whom dating apps dynamics might actually work.

Would it be too cynical to posit dating app algorithms optimize around short term relationships to prevent customer churn? Users must be successful enough to continue subscribing to the platform but not so successful they cancel. Do we even get into OnlyFans 'creators' using dating apps as marketing channels (there are guides online instructing people how to do this, looking at you r/)? Is it too cynical to suggest that social media in general hijacked nascent online communities in the 90s in order to make the world safer for advertising? Anything grassroots and authentic was mowed down and paved over. It wasn't an online paradise, but it is now an virtual parking lot.

The major problem IMO is that the goals of the company (revenue) and the goals of the users (relationships) are misaligned. The companies are most successful when users are only marginally successful or given a proxy illusion of success, because that keeps the subscription revenue flowing. If two users meet and continue offline, bam, two users cancel (excluding poly folk). Companies exploit users' goals to bait them into subscriptions, trick them into surrendering private data, etc.

I feel this way about a lot of modern technology platforms. The goals of social media companies (adtech revenue) are misaligned with the users (community), so that these adtech nee social media companies are motivated to drive engagement even when there is a cost to online communities and society as a whole. Feeds of family and friends devolve into clickbait doomscrolls. Algorithms optimize on inciting rage, because rage drives engagement. It is a powerful emotion. Programmed by evolution us meatbags have our attention optimized towards potential threats. That rage spills offline into deeply divisive politics.

I've opted out of adtech. DuckDuckGo instead of Google. Last month I finally deleted my Facebook account after years of neglect. I'd only kept it to log on to third party sites but never actually used it for that even. I've started a broad retreat from much of the Internet and I don't think it is simple fatigue -- I've been online for over three decades. Monetization drives enshittification and it is has spread like a virus until most of the online landscape is infected. I feel that most sites and apps are only after my attention, my personal data, my money. 90% of the time if I want to look something up I go directly to Wikipedia instead of a search engine. I'm probably just going to pick Wikipedia anyway after I wade through all the ads and marginal sites in the search results. After all the paywalls. I use ChatGPT instead of searching for stuff like simple programming syntax -- sorry Stackoverflow, you were probably the least worst for years, but I'm relieved that AI is doing the work of grinding through dozens of pages to find a helpful answer.

I've subscribed to Coursera to fill the void so that if I am idle and pick up a device, instead of doomscrolling I'll learn something about machine learning. I've mercilessly cancelled most other online subscriptions, beating the lobster trap (easy in, hard out) and surprise renewals and the unsubscribe gauntlet (are you sure you want to cancel -- what about 90% off for the next 6 months?. I funnel that money into a monthly voluntary donation to Wikipedia.

I guess it comes down to ad tech burnout. Tired of monetization. Tired of algorithms optimizing on outcomes beneficial to corporations and even detrimental to me. I'm not seeking experiences online anymore, too many billboards in the way.

Writing this I realize my online experiences had devolved into a litany of crappy marketing tactics. It's almost funny that the first thing a lot of companies seem to think about with generative AI is automating customer service with chatbots, saving money by having less authentic engagement with customers. Predictable and perfect. It's also hilarious that all the content scrapers are screaming about genAI scraping their scraped content. It's the online content ouboros eating it's own AI generated tail.

This is what happens when we seek to monetize all human experience. We need new algorithms, new metrics, new gods, another drink ...
</rant>
#adtech #corporatesurveillance #monetization #trollingisthenewmarketing #notabot