3 ms·

Ah the ol’ network effects are a real high value target for businesses but have no real impact on consumers argument. Nice. “Pathological gregariousness…” wit

Ah the ol’ network effects are a real high value target for businesses but have no real impact on consumers argument. Nice. “Pathological gregariousness…” with the scale and degree of consumption of social media, don’t you think there’s a possibility that actually there’s a universal human desire to connect with one another and it’s the tools themselves that are exploiting it to a pathological degree?

arketyp 5y ago
That's a good point which hard to address adequately in a few sentences. I think, perhaps naively, that corporations would like to make more profit out of people actually feeling good using their services. You could say that being aligned with people's well-being is the long-term better profit, compatible even with the most cynical renditions of capitalism.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  We have little evidence that people even optimize for their own long term well-being
  - arketyp 5y ago
    That's true. But a different interpretation is that natural selection is an optimum in progress. It can all end abruptly, but there can be many branches too.