Because there is an endless amount of human time spent like this, but we all have limited attention for other things.

If you try to appeal to someone’s better parts, then there is a limit to the amount of attention that they can apply to your product.

If you try to appeal to someone’s base need for dopamine, then the limit of attention is much higher.

> While this is true, it stands to question: why build systems to encourage this? Shouldn't we be trying to do better?

until incentives change, people will continue to encourage this. The base instinct behaviors when one is stressed and tired and checked out are the most profitable, the most susceptible to adverts etc.

The way to encourage conciencousness, taking pride in creation etc is to see a few (the right amount of) others (who are seen by the user as peers, not unnatainable far off creators) doing the same. Maybe stretched/challenged a little - one or two at most people above their skill level, who appear approachable and humble.

It's the format of most true knowledge creation, be it classrooms, effective workplaces, sports programs, and others

We have them, they exist for millennia. It's just that most of them are considered too boring or are judged as a whole by looking at some of its members of questionable character - who ironically are there because they know they are not perfect but trying to be better.

Spitballing -

Perhaps due long tail effects.

Tech (platforms) will always be advertising focused, because information systems scale with compute. marginal costs are so minor, that the limit becomes human attention.

Which is also why apple may be able to focus on user centric design better. They are product + tech.

Then again I can see other physical product firms delving into advertising - so its most likely corporate behavior/values.

I think the problem is there isn't a clear delineation between "traps" and "meaningful improvement."

Take Signal for example - early days they had a ton of success with a core group of users, in spite of a number of product warts. Ever since then, they've been making usability improvements to lower friction and appeal to more and more marginal users. Is that good or bad? Based on the hn threads I've seen, it seems like the jury is pretty mixed?

Signal is a special case because it's a generic messenger app - meaning it's target audience is legitimately everyone, and with its philosophy and E2EE in general preventing interoperability, it has to capture everyone. It has to be optimized towards a Marl, or else it'll fail to network effects.

Some software is like that. Most isn't - but the enshittification culture is affecting it all the same.

I don't think signal is an especially special case. While it may be clear and obvious to you which apps are which, I think that the reality is that its never a clear delineation.