Re:Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet
by grawprog on Thursday July 16, 2020 @11:10PM
(#23866583)
Since you mention the early internet, some of the earliest websites I remember would have a 'number of visitors' counter usually in the footer. Which in and of itself is an early form of that validation you speak of. When you found a site with lots of visitors, it validated the site, made it seem more legitimate. And lots of early web site owners would react the same way to a new visitor to their page as a user reacts to a like today.
Validation culture has always been in some ways a part of the internet. Even before the things I spoke of. But I agree though, today it's taken over too much of culture in general. Whereas back in the day, someone may be happy or excited, chances were it didn't affect their life much. Now people's entire lives and fortunes exist because of those validating likes.
When the net was young, it was programmers who put counters in front of content - the urge and obviousness to do so, is so banal and basic that the lack of a counter is comment worthy, not its presence.
Imagine a pristine social network without any counter - how many seconds before one of us posts "I made a small change to the site, which looks like this".
Metrics are such a basic extension of the programming mindset that without a corporations will being imposed to remove them, I cant imagine a site without a like counter of some sort. (Not that firms will remove them, but their absence can only be achieved by a force from above imposing its will on normal human nature.)