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The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
That little button, the one saying ‘follow’? It’s lying to you. The follow lie is a classic tale of enshittification that’s occurred on nearly every social media platform. It’s pretty simple: You join a social media platform and find some people who interest you. You tap follow (or ‘Add friend’, ‘Like page’, ‘Subscribe’), because you want to see their content. For a while, everything works just fine. You see your best friend’s wedding photos, your favourite blogger’s posts.
The follow lie is a classic tale of enshittification that’s occurred on nearly every social media platform. At some point in (I think) 2013, practically overnight, Facebook stopped showing our content to our page’s 1,000 fans unless we paid. TikTok caused our present day spiral towards the interest graph, by showing that it’s by far the most effective way to dominate consumers’ attention.
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