Social Media Profit Driven Enterprises

While using social media we need to remember that it isn’t run for our benefit, but to make as much profit as possible for the shareholders. This makes certain operations better because they are more profitable. 

It's one of the reasons I really don't like some algorithm making decisions about what and in what order I see things. The algorithm for any of these services is based not on what I want to see, but what the company will keep me on the site for the longest time and make them the most money. It's interesting, I don't really mind having ads in my timeline. I just ignore them. It's the fact that the order in which things are shown aren't based on anything that I care about.

I really like to have my entries presented in (reverse) chronological order. If you put an add between some entries, that's OK with me. Just don't muck with the entries that I want to see.

Thinking about Facebook, Twitter, and the others as profit-making entities helps keep me from getting too worked up about things. After all, I grew up with broadcast television and am used to the add-based model. As long as the ads aren't obtrusive I'm OK. I don't really like pop-up ads because they get in the way of my actual interest. Ads that start playing the minute I hit a page cause me to immediately get off the site. If I want to hear your pitch, I will click on your ad. Don't shove it in my face.

I'm also unlikely to pay for things on social media sites. I already pay for streaming and I don't want to pay for reading articles just to avoid the ads or let people that I'm me.

I think that users need to realize that corporations are greedy. They will work to get every ounce of profit from their enterprises. Media outlets are no different. It we want to fight greed in social media, we need to make it more profitable for them to give us what we want and shun those outlets that don't do that. 

Fight with your pocket book and hit them in the only place that they care about -- THEIR pocketbooks.

Moving to Streaming

 We have dropped our cable television and now have only 1GIG Internet service from Fidium. This will reduce our bills and provide us with service. 

We have adopted Roku equipment for our televisions. We don't have all the new-fangled smart TV's, but have added Roku streaming devices.

We still like some local TV, so we have adopted YouTube TV. We also have Amazon Prime and Paramont+. Have nad Amazon Prime for some years and use it to make purchsses, music streaming, movies and original programming. We go a free year of Paramont+ from T-Mobile and decided to keep it after the free period.

It's early, but so far, things seem to be working well. The streaming also has some other advantages, for example today I am writing this on the laptop while watching the Youtube TV on the large monitor. This is something I couldn't do before. You can probably tell that we don't have a lot of the latest technology and really don't want it. But, we are moving into the future.

The objective of this move is to reduce costs so I don't think we will be adding any additional services although we may change services as we use those we have. So far, the setup of services seems to be OK for an old retired guy and his younger and still employed wife.

More as we gain more experience with this setup.