You can't risk something you never cared about in the first place.

“….risks safety to win digital drug arms race”*

The company invested in 700 staff to grow Reels, while safety teams were refused two specialist staff to deal with protecting children and 10 more to help with the integrity of elections.

2000s: we have web forums where people can talk to each other about anything they want, without any sort of corporate control or government censorship! this is awesome, we are living in the future! we should all make sure to preserve and expand this!

2020s:

"harmful"

The algorithms are so fine tuned these days that by swiping once to see the next video you can no longer stop. I spent 40 minutes this morning watching reels after thinking to myself that I'll stop after a couple videos, then I'll make some coffee and have breakfast. After realizing that I wasted my morning I uninstalled the app. My friends will have to send me memes through other channels now.

I thought we knew this as early as the 2010s when Facebook was doing it. Algo-focused social media has been a cesspool pretty much from the start