2 ms·
1) The Internet was quite monetized with ads from almost its inception, and things like targeted advertising, ROI tracking, and sponsored searches were already
by cyber_kinetist 5y ago
1) The Internet was quite monetized with ads from almost its inception, and things like targeted advertising, ROI tracking, and sponsored searches were already rampant in the 90s, though it expanded even more in the 21st century.
2) You can still find lots of smaller communities and websites (that don't get reported to the mainstream) today, probably even more than before. An incredible number of blogs, forums, niche subreddits, Twitter groups, fandom communities, Discord servers, you name it.
- mc32 5y agoThere were ads but content wasn’t manipulated algorithmically for engagement and “eyeballs” as mr Grove put it or outrage as we see today. Moreover the monetization was by the website so the content creator wasn’t optimizing for engagement themselves. With most services having some kind of API “journalists” set triggers or scour for particular things so they can write about something scandalous two people said on some service somewhere so they can present it as zeitgeist.