As far as I understand how things like facebook or reddit work they:

  1. offer an unpaid service to mass consumer

  2. harvest data of the people who use the service

  3. offer paid advertisement space to companies

  4. companies buy advertising because the vast data promise precise targeting

  5. precisely targeted ads convert into sales for companies

  6. the ROI (profit gained to cost of ads) when buying social media ads is greater than ROI on tv or whatever other ads

  7. social media expand on the profits gained from ad space sold to companies

  8. social media corp announces a brand new feature and we return to point 1)

Which step is the closest to breaking? Where are limits of growth and who hits them first? Is there a cap on marketing budgets beyond which companies won’t afford social media ads and tech corps won’t afford expansion and maintenance? A cap on how much data (=how precise ads) can they harvest from us? A lower threshold of general wealth below which ads won’t convert into more profit because people are too poor? A breaking point of enshittification at which user count (=ad visibility) plummets?

The recent apeshit of tech companies after the raised interest rates made me feel that the entire thing is quite fragile and ripe for falling… But I’m not a financial advice so maybe I’m completely clueless.

    • Bernie Ecclestoned@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      True. But their business model is auctioning ads to the highest bidder when we search for relevant things, they just nailed search when people were still using Yahoo and AltaVista.

      I remember using metacrawler.com a lot before Google came along

      • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
        4·
        1 year ago

        I think PageRank was a substantial improvement but - sure. Your premise that the cost of search isn’t endless surveillance is well taken

        • Bernie Ecclestoned@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Oh definitely. It made the internet and information accessable to all.

          Yeah, I’m okay with Google’s business model, unlike Facebook they don’t, as far as I’m aware, sell your data to anyone.

          • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
            3·
            1 year ago

            Oh don’t mistake me. PageRank is cool tech but fuck Google with a stick, they’re a surveillance monopoly like Apple and Meta

            • Bernie Ecclestoned@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Yeah, I compartmentalise my online existence, all socials are on temp mails. Work is on Google workspace, no way around that, but home is on Firefox with all the ad blocking and cookie denying add-ons I can find.

              I ditched FB around 2009 I think and I prefer android just because at least you can install an APK