There’s a paradox at the heart of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other companies that rely on user-generated content — and it’s leading to their downfall.
Some of San Francisco-based Reddit’s most popular content remained hidden from its users on Friday as the heavily trafficked forum site’s moderators staged a massive protest after the firing of an apparently beloved employee.
“Ultimately, they’ll run into limits, however, for the same reason that community self-governance is incompatible with the ownership structure of a capitalist firm and its structural imperative to maximize profit.”there. These companies never came remotely close to fulfilling their communitarian and democratic promises — there was no monetary incentive to do so.
And if there were a body capable of constraining Musks’ erratic behavior online, the company would profit immensely — advertisers, which supplied 90% of Twitter’s revenue pre-Musk, might well return, for one thing. But in a social media dictatorship, there’s no mechanism to appeal for such a change.
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