Scrolling

This morning I saw two posts commenting on how Facebook was paywalling external hyperlinks. In order to link to an external site Facebook is now adding payed tiers. Pay one amount, and you can post more hyperlinks, pay another and you can pay fewer.

Years ago people spoke of the social media silos and Facebook is amplifying the problem, by rationing people’s ability to hyperlink to their own content on other sites. In effect, if you’re in the facebook silo, you’re expected to stay within the silo. Facebook becomes the portal and trap.

Recently I looked at Instagram and I noticed that almost all of the “content” is vertical videos. When I look at Facebook and TikTok I notice the same thing. Yesterday I noticed that Bluesky were promoting that they have ten minute videos. I think all of these people have forgotten that we’re using antisocial media to connect with others, not to watch long videos.

Of course, there is a very good reason for allowing longer and longer videos. Ads. If we watch a video that is several minutes long we are likely to stick around during the ad break to see the end of the video. The longer a video is, the more ads we see, and the more committed we are not to skip them, or force quit the app.