alt Hacker NewsI generally agree with the sentiment, but I can't help but feel like we're attributing to much of this change to LLMs. While they're certainly driving this change even further, this is a trend that has already started way before LLMs became as widespread as they are today.
What personally disturbs me the most is the self censorship that was initially brought forward by TikTok and quickly spread to other platforms - all in the name of being as advertiser friendly as possible.
LinkedIn was the first platform where I really observed people losing their unique voice in favor of corporate friendly - please hire me - speak. Now this seems to be basically any platform. The only platform that seems to be somewhat protected from it is Reddit, where many mods seem to dislike LLMs as much as everybody else. But more likely, its just less noticeable
> the self censorship that was initially brought forward by TikTok
I think that’s even too soon! YouTube has had rules around being advertising friendly for longer than TikTok has existed. And the FCC has fined swearing on public broadcasts for like 50+ years.
But I do agree, we’re attributing too much to LLMs. We don’t see personal, human-oriented content online because social media is just not about community.
1. Young people (correctly) realized they could make lots of money being influencers on social media. TikTok does make that easier than ever. I have close friends who make low 6 figures streaming on TikTok (so obviously they quit the low wage jobs they were doing before).
2. People have been slowly waking up to the fact that social media has always been pretty fake. I quit 6 years ago, and most of my friends have slowly reduced how much they use it. All of the platforms are legally incentivized to only care about profit and engagement. Capitalism doesn’t allow a company to care about community and personal voice, if algorithmic feeds of influencers will make them more money.
There’s still good content out there if you know where to look. But digital human connection happens in group chats, DMs, and FaceTime, not on public social media.