“Not only can’t we curate our information feeds, but we can’t curate our personal desires, so we welcome ads and algorithms to solve the overwhelming problem for us.”
“Using social media that implements an algorithmically curated feed reinforces for users that they shouldn’t be expected to deliberate over any desires or guide their own information-search processes. Such platforms teach users helplessness.”
“Staging information overload deliberately helps with the lessons. The point is to make the surrender pleasurable, as Will Davies suggests here.”
“As with the “sublime” in aesthetic theory, we are overloaded with information so that we can enjoy being overpowered.”
“That is why platforms have always tried to saturate users with information and encourage them to constantly add more people and services to their feeds.”
“The overload is intentional. Overload is the point”
“platforms prefer “context collapse” to communication”
“Their business model relies on having a lot of users spending a lot of time on the site, not necessarily on users posting a lot about themselves. Context collapse may make users post less, but it also generates a prurience about what others post; it salts all posts with a sense of risk that makes them more compelling.”
“It also orients users toward consumption rather than production; or rather, it encourages them to limit their own “prosumption” to safe practices — sharing links to signal their own identity, endorsing other people’s content with likes, and so on.”
“This suits social media platforms just fine; the more programmatic your engagement is with their platform, the better. Ideally you watch your feed like television.”
“Just as algorithmic sorting is posited as something users demand to deal with information overload (when really it allows platforms to serve ads in with content), “context collapse” is deployed to make it seem like users’ sinking into passivity is their own fault and not the platform’s — and meanwhile social media follow the path of all previous mass-media technologies, toward emphasizing the few broadcasting to the many.”
“In re-sorting users feeds, however, feed-curation algorithms aren’t trying to solve information overload; they are hoping to prolong it and make it more enjoyably overwhelming.”
“The sublime overload inculcates users with passivity toward their own curiosity.”
“The procedures that pretend to manage the overload instead direct the users’ surrendered attention toward ads. With their lowered resistance and learned helplessness, they should be more easily persuaded than ever.”
“Both information overload and context collapse are deliberately induced — they are features masquerading as bugs.”
“Both help us enjoy a more passive attitude toward consuming social media, offering plausible deniability to ourselves when we see the ship of active engagement has sailed.”