As a side-note: a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is when they start conflating liking and sharing by implementing the "You follow x, and he liked" feature that you described. Since this clearly violates the user's intention (if you wanted to share something, you would have shared it), this serves as a subtle but distinct signal that manipulating users has become more important than listening to them.

> a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is

... when they are created.

Social networks are inherently evil, that's their business model: manipulate users into addiction and serve ads.

How do non-evil social networks look like? They're forums, plain old forums.

But you don't become an ultra trillionaire with PhpBB.

When I joined FB there were no ads and a chronological feed and everything was awesome. Reddit was awesome.

Nowadays they are an evil manipulation mess, but I don't think it is an inherit property of social networks.

Phase 1: user acquisition.

Phase 2: profit (through using and abusing their users).

Both steps are written in stone in their business plan on day 1, you just don't know it.

As a user you were still in phase 1.

Similar story with image hosting websites. First they don't have ads and load fast and don't really have image restrictions. Then they start adding restrictions and ads.

Profit doesn't have to be equivalent to abuse. The idea that you have to abuse your users to make a profit is a relatively new one pioneered by Silicon Valley scum thanks to anti-competitive practices and lax/non-existent regulation.

Before this, we had centuries of businesses who were sustainable by just charging a fair premium on the goods they sold to their customers, and both sides were happy enough with the transaction to continue.

Well, considering the context of this thread, are there any social networks not working based on the Silicon Valley model? I don't know any.

The phone company? You pay them a fee for access and that's it - they have no incentive to prioritize certain callers over others for "engagement"'s sake.

In this context social networks = social media = Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and their ilk, we can't really include AT&T in this conversation :-)

Why not? My point is that a communications network doesn't have to be hostile. It is possible to run a communications platform and get people to pay for it.

Back in the day? Maybe. Today? Yeah, sure you could create something and try to charge people, but most people are now used to free + ads.

You'll never get enough traction to break through to the mainstream, unless something radical changes.

i'd argue social networks only become evil if the want to grow revenue and earnings and more importantly keep growing them at some fixed rate y/y for too long (otherwise they get recategorized as value instead of growth and all the juicy multiples disappear from their stock grants...)

Or federated like the Fediverse applications, i.e. Mastodon. It's much harder to squeeze users because they can leave you without loosing their social network.

> Social networks are inherently evil, that's their business model

What's evil about Mastodon, Matrix, Pleroma, diaspora, etc?

The fact that if they're good they're not adopted, I guess?

I don't know anyone using any of those networks.

Disagree here - you can insert things into a chronological timeline just fine - it's no more jarring than an algorithmic one.

Nothing wrong with showing me, and clearly denoting, a tweet that I might like in between other tweets I browse.

Don't understand this black and white thinking.

I agree that's a possible reason. But I don't think it's specifically necessary for Twitter, especially the sort of power user who wants a chronological timeline.

Whether or not they show topic data for a particular tweet, they generally have it. I only use the chronological timeline, and I cleared out the interests list a year or two back, but they have built up a profile of hundreds of interests for me.

I suspect forcing the ranked timeline on people is all about a small portion of Twitter juicing their engagement metrics, with no grand cross-team strategy in play.