Social media platforms present themselves as tools for connecting with friends, but that is not how they are actually used. Most people spend their time consuming content from strangers, not interacting with people they know. In court, these companies have even shown data suggesting that users do not primarily use their platforms for socializing, yet they continue to market themselves as social networks. In reality, modern social media functions more like a content farm.

This shift began with Web 2 around 2005, when platforms like Facebook and YouTube introduced following and subscriptions. While this gave users some control over what they saw, it was not ideal for investors. Advertisers, not users, became the real customers, and what advertisers want is attention. Early feeds had natural stopping points, which limited how long people stayed.

To solve this, platforms introduced infinite scrolling, removing the moment where users could naturally stop. Aza Raskin, who helped create this mechanism, later admitted that its impact was harmful. From that point on, feeds stopped being about updates and became endless loops designed to maximize time spent.

TikTok took this further by ignoring who users followed and instead optimizing feeds entirely around behavior. The breakthrough was not short videos but the loop itself. Endless, personalized feeds work best in short formats, which is why they feel more powerful on apps like Instagram than on YouTube, where users still need to make more choices.

Because of this, followers and subscribers matter far less than they once did. The algorithm does not care about audience size, only about whether content can hold attention inside the loop. Social media today is not built around connection but around attention, and it works exactly as designed.