The Follow Lie, and Why It’s Worse Than Ever
27th April 2024
That little button, the one saying ‘follow’? It’s lying to you.
The follow lie is a classic tale of enshittification that’s occurred on nearly every social media platform. It’s pretty simple:
You join a social media platform and find some people who interest you. You tap follow (or ‘Add friend’, ‘Like page’, ‘Subscribe’), because you want to see their content. For a while, everything works just fine. You see your best friend’s wedding photos, your favourite blogger’s posts.
Soon though, the follow lie kicks in. Something happens. You start seeing a lot less of people you follow, and a lot more of people you don’t follow. But you’re still stuck on the platform, because of all that time you’ve invested in following people there (after all, you still see some of their content) — and a lot of the new stuff you get shown, from people you don’t follow, is addictive. It keeps you scrolling to see what’s up next. The platform benefits by slipping in more and more ads around the content.