I was a fan of social media at it's birth. Like many, I saw an ability to stay in touch with old acquaintances with less effort and intrusion. We didn't have

I was a fan of social media at it's birth. Like many, I saw an ability to stay in touch with old acquaintances with less effort and intrusion. We didn't have to interrupt each other with a phone call, or worry about replying to a text in a reasonable amount of time. People would post updates, interact with the updates, and thus in a sense interact with each other's personalities manifested in these posts/comments/likes. It was convenient, and I feel, beneficial. Then came "the algorithms", capitalist refinement of the experience to increase user attention and interaction. Or more accurately, addiction. This is where I had to quit, a couple years ago. The updated algorithms (instead of linear time representation of posts) did cause me to care too much. There was too frequently new content to see, from things I didn't even care about. Cool videos from GoPro, RedBull, etc. Weeks old updates from forgotten friends sprinkled in to make it personal. Much of the time I used to spend in my head, in a good way, such as in line at a grocery store, or waiting for a project to compile, I was now refreshing feeds. My mind operated more in the realm of social media than in it's own existence. Now we get to the consolidation. All of your social media, even your "private" chats on WhatsApp, tied to one profile. One centralized database of your life, quickly queryable, cleaned, sorted, and available to advertisers and governments alike. One part of me actually likes this change from Facebook. At least they're being honest about their data being merged. But it's another optimization designed to generate revenue, do not believe otherwise. It's one more step towards the apex of profitability. I don't know what the results of this step will be, but I'll probably be bitter about it, and make another rambling comment in a couple of years.