race to the bottom of LinkedIn
When will LinkedIn begin to look like TikTok? Because it will happen soon.
The TikTok-ification of every social media platform in the ecosystem is pervasive within even those feeds that appear mere business functionaries.
This is the Race to the Bottom.
TikTok’s meteoric rise has proven to shareholders and profit-mongers the viability of what Instagram now calls “Reels”, what Youtube calls “Shorts”, and what LinkedIn will call “Clips” (or some other nonsensical synonym). This short-term benefit outweighs any cost.
If history is written by the victors, then, certainly history will be penned in 6-second audiovisual ink…
Racing to the bottom of the brain stem or the lowest extractive method or the weakest pain point of society is the only way to get ahead in a market without incentivization’s toward the inverse. When a competitor like TikTok engineers a new way of capturing attention (which equates only to dollars in the eyes of myopic Big Tech companies) the race is on.
It can’t be stressed how fundamental this feature is to the design of tech companies, and the economies unable to regulate them, today.
The only boon within this is the Instagram community’s response to the company changing (read: copying) tactics. Some users are switching to the app that does algorithmic, video content better. Many are quitting the turncoat app entirely.
If this is something Instagram doesn’t recover from quickly, maybe others will learn a lesson.
Regardless, it points out the feature of social media companies that is most detrimentally self-interested.
With damage to society ongoing, a people and community have power and a choice.
Much of power comes from perception. Public and personal. How we in culture view and talk about the platforms of today will shape the platforms of tomorrow. How we wield the power granted us now will determine the unfolding of our ethics and beliefs in reality then.
The power we have is executed through macro and micro-means.
Apple and Google can enforce accountability upon the inhabitants of their software (see Apple’s recent change to require apps to make an in-app Delete My Account button). Legislation can require tighter policing of age-appropriate content and methods for attention extraction (see the recently passed Kids Online Safety Act for some states).
We all have roles in the story. We all can choose to be good-faith actors. Or…
The comfort is that there are communities outside the norm who accept the people within broken systems.
What we will never do, however, is accept the system itself… until it is unbroken.
