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:
As someone on Twitter said: that’s load-bearing porn.
I know conventions that (eventually) ended because certain people stopped attending. The attrition took a few years to have an impact, but once those people stopped going, some of their friends stopped going in following years. And once THOSE people stopped going, *their* friends stopped going in following years. In one particular case, by the time you hit the third iteration of that, most of the people *I* usually went to hang out with were no longer going, so *I* stopped going. And that year, three people said to me, “You know, you were one of the last people left that I wanted to go hang out with, so I guess I won’t bother to go this year either,” and I doubt I’m the only one who had a variant of that conversation with their friends that year. It was like,“You tell three friends and they tell three friends,” only with the opposite effect that is usually hoped for with that kind of networking. Eventually the event didn’t have enough paying attendees to afford to continue.
Sometimes you don’t know what qualifies as load-bearing until it is taken out and things start to collapse.
Aaaand sometimes it’s really fucking obvious and you were a fool to flag every single instance of it as “inappropriate” and queue it for deletion.
anyway tony stark has been on the brink of death countless times throughout his life and he’s always survived. death can’t take him. it’s physically impossible. it’s against the laws of nature.
Okay but who other than Tony “the mechanic” Stark could get a crashed alien spaceship up and running and actually fly it into space like 5 minutes after getting stabbed through the gut by a giant grape? No one else that’s fucking who. my man
Staff: We’re getting rid of all adult content on Dec. 17th to combat illegal content!
Everyone: You do realize this ban only hurts the people producing legal content, right? Like, those small pages posting illegal stuff never tag their pages appropriately, and don’t care about having to remake a new blog if theirs gets nuked because they can just make a new burner account to post that stuff again.
Staff: …
Everyone: The only adult content that will likely be spreading around would be the illegal content, since you are strong-arming the legally-abiding and responsible adult content creators who take care to tag and label their content and not post anything that’s god damn illegal.
Staff: …
Everyone: That’s also assuming that there won’t be people that just continue posting adult content, either with censor bars or cuts to bypass the adult content check, or by just posting whatever anyway and not caring.
Staff: …
Everyone: None if this even addresses the racism problems that people did have, including the adult bloggers you are now getting rid of. You can’t just get rid of text posts or images of disgusting rheotoric unless there’s a nipple in the mix, yeah?
Staff: …
Everyone: Speaking of which, this new plan of yours still requires moderation, which is seemingly the main responsibility you are actively dodging with this adult content ban measure.
Staff: …
Everyone: So now, basically nothing will have changed except for all the responsible adult content creators being gone that made up a decent number of your most active and loyal users, some of the most active critics and filters of racist content users being banned, and the only people being left posting illegal content or blatantly breaking your rules to post legal adult content to spite you.
us: we wanna see tony stark being emotional and we want a character centric movie
marvel: lmao okay here’s tony stark drifting through space thinking he’s gonna die alone after having failed his life long quest of protecting humanity and his loved ones
“The need to feel safe, in particular, is often treated as childish and absurd—but only when coming from people who have actual reason to feel vulnerable. Asking to be recognized as your true gender? It’s all in your head. Asking for accommodations for illness and disability? You’re too sensitive. Recounting experiences of dehumanization because of your race or gender? What an overreaction. But those who want to make the country “safer” by securing the borders against people they perceive as outsiders are never painted as whiners or cowards. The police officers killing unarmed folks in a moment of panic are not mocked for failing to keep their feelings in check. When someone wants a deadly weapon, their desire to feel safe becomes a rugged and real and sexy conviction.
The easiest way to ignore something is to call it an emotion, yet it’s also the easiest way to defend something if you’re the kind of person whose emotions are taken seriously.”
—
Stop Treating Emotions Like Character Flaws Of The Powerless (via xpityx)
elfarock 