Because it works

It doesn’t work for you but it works for the casual user

Promoting shitty short rage bait content, charged headlines where no one reads the articles, etc drives traffic up with casual users who are far less likely to use ad blockers, far more likely to use native apps, far more likely to enable tracking features blindly, etc.

Power users don’t like it but power users don’t view ads, are more likely to be privacy focused, etc. they also are a very small demographic so they are simply ignored once they are annoying. Before they are annoying they are marketed to bc they can be milked with things like premium subscriptions for no ads or whatever.

Subscriptions don’t sell for social media, advertising doesn’t pay until you’re scaled wayyyyy up, and generally once advertising and outside funding gets seriously involved they start pushing you to get as many impressions as possible. So basically advertising is a cancer that ruins everything along with the capitalistic need for constant growth and endless profits

Ain’t that why we on the fediverse now? Yea, I hate these corporate trends too.

Because an ad or a subscription is more obvious.

Algorithms are harder to prove and don't interrupt the flow of content, thus less people get pissed, which means less people leave, and they can charge higher rates to advertisers.

I think it's the same principle that led to the slogan "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM". It's a list of checkboxes that someone can present to investors and get money.

Executives get the majority of their income through shares and an increase in share price.

Whatever works for the year to increase share price makes you rich.

Inflation/cost of living/etc isn't singlehandedly increasing "enshittification" but rather the boundless greed of capitalism which seeks infinite growth of profit.

It's unsustainable so we'd better make more humans to buy more stuff from a handful of people.

The algorithm bullshit is to show you more content (and therefore more ads). The ideal for social media companies is like tik tok where you just scroll endlessly.

On twitter or Reddit I look at the posts from the accounts and subs I follow and then am done.

Because they care about one metric: time spent watching ads.

If they only show you chronological - for example - there is a risk you open the app, find that nothing has happened (or what happened is of low quality). Controlling what you see makes it easier to also ensure there's always a reason to visit the page. Leaving it all to recency or popularity or something means handing over the control of your time.

And it's always going to piss off people but the important part is what it does for the big masses (which likely is - more time spent watching ads)

Welcome to the "Enshittification of the Internet":

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/enshittification

(I know it's knowyourmeme, but it's probably the closest to a Wikipedia article on the subject)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/