It's a bummer that these unethical tactics continue to work. They should offer a bounty for people who report cases that are successfully pursued, like for tax evasion or whistleblowing more generally.

That would lead to a slew of possible cases and a greater fear of getting caught. If people are willing to go on the record saying they're not worried about it, then they are really not worried about it.

Every single app/service/"community"/whatever which is based around total optimization of your "algorithm", ie, total optimization of owning your eyeballs being in that app, are working in an attention economy.

The purchaser of attention with the biggest pockets has always been advertising and always will be. Almost nothing else needs to pay for attention.

As a rule, nothing you would really enjoy or like should need to pay for your attention.

Short form content, both microblogging and short videos, is this. It's just about capturing your eyeballs and streaming whatever someone else pays for directly into your brain. It's so absurdly profitable to be able to just auction off the screen you've glued your eyeballs to that every TV manufacturer has pivoted to exactly that business model and has profited handsomely.

I can't understand why so many people don't intuitively feel this like I do, and do not naturally recoil in disgust the way I do to these things. Don't you feel how empty and vacuous this media format is? Don't you feel repulsed by how mechanical it feels? Can't you notice the "structure" of the format and how content agnostic it is? The creators you think you care about are nothing more than a light coat of paint over the actual medium of anger and fear and hatred that captures your attention.

How do people not feel the constant drain of advertising on their mental effort like I do?

I'm not smart or special or anything. Why do I have this reaction, when normal people seem to have a strongly addictive reaction instead?