Agreed on all points. Interesting to see this: > You can argue that all of this has existed for a very long time, back from the days of all kinds of toolbars and extensions that created multiple levels of address bar nesting in your web browser and taskbar. What I find ironic about the whole situation is, back then it was universally known that those toolbars and extensions are distributed by assholes. The whole soft…
>Something weird happened over the past decade. PR happened. The big players have figured out that if they want to keep misbehaving to make money, they needed people to not fight them. To do so, one amazing tool is to make sure the entire way to speak about the topic is controlled by them. Internet gave us the ability to share more, and we though it would allow us to defend our self better, to make people more aware.…
Cynical prediction: AI influencers, possibly with a hybrid components. Accounts powered by some GPT-esque generator, acting like a real human, shilling various widgets in a naturalistic way. Use humans-in-the-loop to add randomness and natural-ness. Or just AI extending how much marketers can generate.
And/or microinfluencers. Platforms benefitting (otherwise regular) users in some way to adopt some stance. Oh, you said good things about Brawndo, and our fingerprinting was able to trace your social media to your amazon wishlist, which happens to have Brawndo in it? Free pack of brawndo shipped to you from a "mystery admirer". Post a selfie with a logo prominently, CV bots pic it up, get swag. Gossip quickly spreads that if you say nice things about X, or take pics of Y, you get free swag. Suddenly your feed is full of your friends giving a lot of organic-seeming attention to corporate products. It'll put the Sunoco bumper sticker campaign to shame.