For these social media ad companies to profit, self awareness had to be done away with. The profit machine stops working when the crowd realizes they’re trapped inside of it.
I don’t think the older internet was crude. It was more polished than the social media garbage of today. Corporatized internet had to mess all that the old internet worked to achieve. Because if everyone starts understanding the meta-dynamics of the internet again, then crowds will realize they’re trapped inside corporate internet. The profit machines would stop working.
You ever notice how the old internet figured out the basic rules of teh game decades ago. But trying to tell the social media crowds how these things work is like talking to a brick wall.
Voats problem wasn’t engagement. It was literal nazis.
They tried to prop up a thin veneer of legitimacy but at some point they just stopped caring. The front page became blatant “kill all [whatever]” type posts. That’s when engagement completely collapsed.
Lemmy has some clearly in bad faith instances which are probably run by nazis. Federation seems to be doing its job of resilience.