alt Hacker News> I think consumers are slightly smarter now that they don't want to be drawn into this kind of addictive toxic content.
The addictive toxic content will go the way of tobacco and explore new markets.
Back in 2010 around 11% of the population of Indonesia was connected to the internet. Currently it's closer to 80% - largely via mobile phones. That's approximately 200mln new users.
Nigeria and Pakistan are going through the same change, just started later.
Since 2016 India alone added more users than the mentioned countries combined.
That's a lot of first generation users. More than the entire western population.
I'm reminded of a video from the 80's/90's where researchers took a TV to the Amazon to see how "live off the land" tribes reacted to high technology. Apparently they stopped doing everything and just wanted to watch TV all day. And that was just regular old TV.
Short form video is a special kind of crack. I see even old people getting hypnotized by it. And even worse, they're terrible at determining if something is AI.