How we lost communication to entertainment

Clarifying the Article & Premise

• Some readers were confused by the article’s timeline; others pointed to an earlier post explaining that the “controversial blog post” was written long before publication.
• Several felt the essay’s tone veered into pretentious or melodramatic, obscuring otherwise valid points.

Are Communication Networks Profitable?

• The article’s claim that “communication networks are not profitable” was heavily contested.
• Commenters cited telecom as both proof and counter-proof: huge capital costs and regulatory dependence, but also a long-standing industry with real revenue.
• Others argued moderation, legal risk, and abuse handling are the real cost centers online, pushing systems toward ad-funded “broadcast” rather than small-scale communication.

Advertising, Engagement, and Loss of Public Space

• Strong agreement that advertising has captured much of online life: “we lost communication to advertising,” and even “we lost civilization to advertising.”
• Proposals ranged from banning all ads (starting with gambling/drugs and targeted ads) to taxing ad-driven services or criminalizing opaque third-party code execution.
• Some argued the real problem is not “social media” per se but engagement-optimization in service of ads.

Communication vs Entertainment (and Social Media’s Role)

• Many distinguished person-to-person tools (calls, SMS, group chats, Signal/Discord) from broadcast-style feeds (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram), arguing only the latter have been fully enshittified.
• Others said what’s really being lost is social networking—meeting new people in semi-public spaces; 1:1 messaging still works but doesn’t replace that.
• Several noted that users themselves often seek ragebait and drama even without algorithms; outrage is “human nature” that platforms amplify.

Decentralization, Fediverse, and ActivityPub

• Disagreement over whether decentralized platforms are “email 2.0” (reliable delivery of messages) or simply “television 2.0” (user-generated content feeds).
• The Pixelfed/Mastodon example (only image posts surfaced, text silently dropped) was used to illustrate how ActivityPub can be treated as entertainment, not communication.
• Fediverse advocates argued federation mainly helps resist centralized control of algorithms, not necessarily the shift from communication to consumption; rage and influencer dynamics still appear.

AI Slop and the Future of Content

• Many saw AI-generated “slop” as the logical endpoint: platforms replacing human creators with auto-tuned, engagement-maximized content, then selling access to advertisers and politicians.
• Concerns extended to AI-heavy search (LLM answers for simple queries) as wasteful, engagement-driven, and data-hungry.

Addiction, Mental Health, and Possible Responses

• Multiple comments framed modern feeds as a dopamine hack comparable to drugs or cigarettes; some suggested we may need similar tools: taxation, age limits, and public education.
• Others were fatalistic: addictive media will act as a “filter,” selecting for those who can resist; regulation can at best reduce harm.
• Proposals for “revolt” ranged from mass account deletion to more targeted campaigns (right to opt out of AI features, attacking ad incentives rather than platforms).