> There’s Google Slop, YouTube slop, TikTok slop, Marvel slop, Taylor Swift slop, Netflix slop. One thought I just had was that maybe we should all sell their stock. Yes, they may report record breaking numbers of engagement etc. But purely qualitatively, as users, we know how corporate garbage their platforms and content have become and so this is information for an investment decision if you ask me. I know it sounds incredibly arrogant but Kiwi News has almost never slop and I often even prefer reading here over going on Youtube. I mean I‘m the founder, but I really do think this can be true for anyone interested in my type of content.
That's an interesting question. Let's say Google, YouTube, Marvel, etc. were startups and they'd produce garbage content. Would I invest in them? Probably not. On one hand, I wouldn't invest because I don't want to support the production & distribution of garbage content. On the other hand, I wouldn't believe in their sustainable growth. It's not that I don't believe in Google's quarterly reports, I just think that even if they grow a lot, it would eventually break because their product is bad and only gets worse. This slop reminds me of the "Tyranny of the Marginal User", where companies build so strong habits around their products that they can eshittify them and not see users decline. Reposting my comment from that discussion: "Let's say your billion users are, on average, 80/100 happy with your product. They built a strong habit of using your product, so they won't easily break it. Let's say only if they get to 40/100 happiness will they stop using the product and rebuild their habits just to use something else. It means you can add a feature that would turn 80/100 happiness into 70/100 happiness without seeing that in your metrics. So there's this latent old user happiness decrease. And if that feature makes the marginal user more happy, the metrics will show it's a net plus for the product. This is what I experienced with this Polish news site [I have been checking out everyday for the last 20+ yrs]. I'm less happy than I used to be, but I haven't reached the 40/100 happiness threshold, so I won't rebuild my habits to use another site."