Paul GrahamVerified account

I think this is basically rational as a product prioritization, because converting hyperconsuming outliers to consuming on your platform and/or converting casuals into hyperconsuming outliers is far, far, far more valuable than serving casual users. Product optimizes for that.https://twitter.com/acarboni/status/976545648391553024 …

(Reporting, not endorsing. "Make the engagement number go up" is going to produce a lot of questionable policies, but to the extent that the Internet is funded by ads, there will be smart people given those marching orders.)

You'll note that this didn't use to happen in advertising-based business models; it is a second- or third-order impact of having data on individual users. The amount you could justify to have a casual fan versus a serial consumer of Law and Order were basically the same number.

But it is very, very probable that one can identify two demographically similar 37 year old US-based men, one who has seen five minutes of one Youtube video and one who watches 12+ hours a day, and Google optimizes monomaniacally in whatever it takes to bring #2 back tomorrow.

I'll note that Youtube is recruiting armies upon armies of people who are essentially paid to perform anthropological research and community management of hingefluencers, which is a dynamic that talk about The Algorithm often misses.

Google search was a symbiosis between the borg and SEOs who it incentivized to solve their ML and product problems by filling in the gaps in the Internet and making them maximally discoverable by whatever technology Google had. Youtube similarly uses/employs/etc Youtubers.

Sometimes this is great. Youtube cuts materially sized checks, daily, to a creative middle class the world over, including funding some extremely quality programming. The consumer surplus for e.g. parents is pretty incredible, if you carefully curate what your kids watch.