» Theory · Background
It's a tool.
But not yours.
There's a big misconception about social media: that it's a tool we use. Here's the other half of the story.
01The Business Model
There's a big misconception about social media: that it's a tool we use. To inform ourselves, stay in touch with friends, share memories and be entertained.
Yes, social media is a tool — but it's not ours. It's the tool of the big tech corporations. They use it to analyse, control and monetise our attention, our relationships and even our political work — taking on every social cost in the process.
Let us explain: like all companies, Meta, TikTok & Co. have to make money by selling a product or a service. Because these aren't small companies but billion-dollar tech giants, the pressure is especially high: they don't just have to pay their staff, but above all keep their shareholders and investors happy.
Meta annual report
Where does this money come from? If social media were really made for you or me, we'd be the ones paying for it. But we don't.
In fact, Meta makes 98 % of its money with personalised advertising. Other companies pay to run ads on Instagram or Facebook — and for something else: the certainty that the ad won't fizzle out, but reaches exactly the people who will actually click and buy.
For that, Meta needs two things: our time and attention, so we see as many ads as possible. And our data, so the ads can be targeted as precisely as possible. The corporation gets both by keeping us online longer and longer.
↑ The cycle: the longer you stay, the more the platform earns.
We're not the customers. We're not the product. We're the raw material the product is made from
And social media is the tool Big Tech uses to extract our attention and data and turn it into money.
02A Look into the Engine Room
In the offices of Meta, YouTube or TikTok, developers therefore tinker day in, day out on raising our engagement — and with a lot of success.
The man who invented infinite scrolling is called ✎ add name. Most of us have gotten so used to it that we don't even remember social media once looked completely different: you scrolled and scrolled — and then hit the end of the page.
Like we only know from search engines today, you had to actively decide to open the next page.
✎ Name has calculated how much lifetime his invention costs us. ✎ add figure/quote
✎ Text to follow — why outrage drives engagement.
✎ Text to follow — variable reward. Pull-to-refresh as a one-armed bandit.
03The Problems
This business model causes a whole lot of costs and problems. But while the companies rake in the profit, we pay the price.
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★ By the way
It's not only social media platforms that make their money by keeping us as passive consumers in front of a screen for as long as possible: Netflix, Prime & Co. have a similar goal. Because the more time we spend there, the less likely we are to cancel our subscription.
04New Rules!
We think the platforms are there to connect us with our friends or to inform us about topics that matter to us. But that's not true. Instagram & Co. only serve us posts from our friends or informative content for as long as it keeps us online. And unfortunately they've found out: other things often work much better to get us hooked.
The platforms are deliberately designed to make us dependent. On our own, we'll have a very hard time standing up to the combined power of these corporations and freeing ourselves from their pull.
But the platforms can't change on their own either. Over the past decades there have been, again and again, people inside the big tech companies who tried to change something: to make the platforms less addictive and more social instead. In the end they always failed. Not out of bad will — but because when engagement drops, first ad revenue collapses, then investors bail, and in the end the whole company takes damage.
So the people who work for Instagram or TikTok aren't bad people. Sure, investors and shareholders profit from the current system. But the companies and their employees are prisoners of the system themselves. Their success doesn't depend on whether they act morally — but on whether they steer more attention and collect more data than their competition.
The rules are broken.
That's why we need new ones.