I think the real problem here is that big media corporations seem to believe that social media userbases are fungible, and persist in acting on this belief no matter how many times it’s demonstrated to be wrong.
There’s a specific pattern of events that plays out over and over (and over) again, and it looks something like this:
1. Social media platform becomes popular
2. Social media platform is purchased by big media corporation in order to gain access to it large user base
3. Big media corporation realises that social media platform’s demographics are not the demographics they want to sell things to.
4. Big media corporation institutes measures to drive away “undesirable” users, apparently in the honest belief that the outgoing users will automatically be replaced by an equal number of new, more demographically desirable users
5. This does not, in fact, occur
6. Social media platform crashes and burns
You’d think that, by the sheer law of averages, at least one person who’s capable of learning from experience would become involved in this whole process at some point.
That person has been fired
The media execs fail their math. Specifically, they fail the network theory.
They look at the numbers, like Tumblr’s where only 1% of the users make 99% of the explicit content, if I remember a recent study right. So, why don’t we lose that 1% and live happily ever after? – an exec says.
Because! The networks on social media are decentralized, and the 1% are the key nodes:
Those local nodes are load-bearing, like the cornerstones of a building. Remove them, and the network falls apart and dies.
Soundwave has that image on his wall, because he’s competent:
I can’t believe this post went from explaining the history of social media, to using math to explain it… to a link to a light bondage Transformers fic.
Marshmellowmilktea 