Your point about the lack of linking out leading to a lack of transparency and openness is an important one. Links are akin to citations in an academic paper. Without them, there is an echo chamber of nonsense and false information without data gets to spread.
You're right, and I hit this regularly, in Reddit groups and Facebook groups, especially. I think there's another reason: the group members and moderators themselves. It's not just the walled garden syndrome.
On Reddit, for example, I found that some groups would allow a Substack link if the topic was germane to the group's purpose. Others would just reject it, or worse yet, not respond at all.
Facebook: same thing. I have one post in the Baseball group that is just languishing, with no response at all. It IS about baseball.
There are just lazy group moderators, and anal controlling moderators. There's no discipline for them. The platform owners need to pay them a small amount, and fire them if they don't perform. Ha ha. As if that's likely.
In some cases, the members themselves just think, "Any link is likely to be spam, or malware. Reject them all."
Thank you, You so right, I am a big fan of the external link. It helps me learn and verify. I love to put links on to things I write so that people can go deeper if they like.
In fact so many political stories revolve around politician X said Y with no link to.the source. So I end up googling it find the clip or tweet or whatever, and low and behold, they didn't actually say Y.
It started innocently enough with sites blocking links to avoid spam but over time has evolved into a ban on outside content. Heck you can’t really post a link to any site on X and expect to get any sort of distribution.
As Sam Ogborn pointed out in a TikTok video (https://www.tiktok.com/@marketingwithsam/video/7345236435571707179), even search engine traffic from Google is expected to go down as the algorithm is continuously tweaked to reduce spammy content. If AI models are trained on private datasets from these walled garden platforms the problem will only get worse.
Fact is, most of humanity is human garbage. Yiu just have to accept this. The 1% will have their own domain name ($20/year), their own websites (under $100/year, assuming moderate traffic), their own email list, etc. Who cares what the human garbage does? Network effect among human garbage means you get dragged down to the garbage level. Leave them alone.
BTW pretty shitty comment section you have here. I had to hit load, then backup, then load again, etc, etc before the damn thing finally showed properly. Substack, versus an open system under your own control.
Before YouTube, I was part of the Videoblogging community. It was amazing to see how everything worked together in this haphazard way to encourage exposure and access to information.
It was interesting to watch how YouTube almost instantly transformed an entire micro ecosystem overnight.
Today there’s a lot of parallels I see to the prompt engineering community and yet whereas a decade ago it really did seem to be true that, “if you build it they will come,” these days it seems like the system is carefully games to prevent you from securing adequate exposure without putting some money in the jukebox.
It’s true on social media, but this same enshittification extends all the way to internet dating where loneliness is milked like some sad drug at $25 a month.
Your point about the lack of linking out leading to a lack of transparency and openness is an important one. Links are akin to citations in an academic paper. Without them, there is an echo chamber of nonsense and false information without data gets to spread.
well put
You're right, and I hit this regularly, in Reddit groups and Facebook groups, especially. I think there's another reason: the group members and moderators themselves. It's not just the walled garden syndrome.
On Reddit, for example, I found that some groups would allow a Substack link if the topic was germane to the group's purpose. Others would just reject it, or worse yet, not respond at all.
Facebook: same thing. I have one post in the Baseball group that is just languishing, with no response at all. It IS about baseball.
There are just lazy group moderators, and anal controlling moderators. There's no discipline for them. The platform owners need to pay them a small amount, and fire them if they don't perform. Ha ha. As if that's likely.
In some cases, the members themselves just think, "Any link is likely to be spam, or malware. Reject them all."
Seen this too, incredible so many have been conditioned to wholesale think this way about links
Thank you, You so right, I am a big fan of the external link. It helps me learn and verify. I love to put links on to things I write so that people can go deeper if they like.
In fact so many political stories revolve around politician X said Y with no link to.the source. So I end up googling it find the clip or tweet or whatever, and low and behold, they didn't actually say Y.
We're lucky enough to have grown-up in the pre-platform era.
this is true
One of the best things I read this week. Thanks!
thanks - let's all continue to not be quiet about this one
It started innocently enough with sites blocking links to avoid spam but over time has evolved into a ban on outside content. Heck you can’t really post a link to any site on X and expect to get any sort of distribution.
As Sam Ogborn pointed out in a TikTok video (https://www.tiktok.com/@marketingwithsam/video/7345236435571707179), even search engine traffic from Google is expected to go down as the algorithm is continuously tweaked to reduce spammy content. If AI models are trained on private datasets from these walled garden platforms the problem will only get worse.
Fact is, most of humanity is human garbage. Yiu just have to accept this. The 1% will have their own domain name ($20/year), their own websites (under $100/year, assuming moderate traffic), their own email list, etc. Who cares what the human garbage does? Network effect among human garbage means you get dragged down to the garbage level. Leave them alone.
BTW pretty shitty comment section you have here. I had to hit load, then backup, then load again, etc, etc before the damn thing finally showed properly. Substack, versus an open system under your own control.
I'll see if I can make the settings better sorry
Before YouTube, I was part of the Videoblogging community. It was amazing to see how everything worked together in this haphazard way to encourage exposure and access to information.
It was interesting to watch how YouTube almost instantly transformed an entire micro ecosystem overnight.
Today there’s a lot of parallels I see to the prompt engineering community and yet whereas a decade ago it really did seem to be true that, “if you build it they will come,” these days it seems like the system is carefully games to prevent you from securing adequate exposure without putting some money in the jukebox.
It’s true on social media, but this same enshittification extends all the way to internet dating where loneliness is milked like some sad drug at $25 a month.