• 30 Nov, 2025 *

I sometimes wonder if we have too uncritically accepted the marketing narrative of social media companies about how connectivity is always good and preferable, and that they as the mediators always need to be the ones facilitating it in their own way.

I’ll have to narrow it down: Of course having friends, family, a support network is good - even needed - and work connections get you further professionally, both offline and online. That’s not what I mean.

What I see critically instead are tech companies continuing to advertise their services as facilitating these connections, when they actually do so less and less in favor of more sponsored content and AI bots, and that the best way for connection to happen is to have an endless supply, and on their platform.

They were extremely successful in convincing many of us that merely having potential access to more people, and many more people having access to us directly, is an advantage and counts as “being connected” (meaning: more than the simple software connection between us). I just don’t believe that, at least for a private person who doesn’t need to win over customers or become a brand.

We can see daily that most of us are just not equipped to handle thousands or more people coming at us online. There’s good reasons why famous people used to have a more filtered access to fans via fan mail, interviews, magazines and the occasional meet and greet, plus a PR team and media training. There is a sweet spot when we have relationships to just enough people to be happy without the attention becoming a burden.

These companies have conflated a sort of passive consumption, access and surveillance with “connection” and “relationships”, using the image of keeping up with friends and family via a platform to imply that thousands consuming your posts without ever talking to you and more or less surveilling you as a stranger counts the same. They have facilitated a business model around parasocial behaviors with influencers via this exact narrative.

They also want you to believe that you need their platforms for relationship maintenance, and they have succeeded, with many claiming they would not be able to get a hold of their inner circle or know about their lives if they deleted their account… which is sad.

The idea that you cannot interact with family anymore without this platform, that you can go through millions of strangers to find your next best friend or partner or other opportunity, keeps you on it.

The exchange of posts across millions of people keeps each other on the platform too, as you’re always looking for new posts and never run out. No one would use it if it was dead, and they’d use it less if a post couldn’t generate these juicy numbers. That reinforces itself.

There’d be less posts to consume if most people limited their profiles and posts for privacy, and ragebait loses its teeth if everyone just blocks the poster or blocks each other too freely. People are also expected to make themselves available 24/7 and overshare, which helps mine additional data and creates more attractive and scandalous content round the clock for the other users to consume, as opposed to just using it for an hour a day.

All of these factors have in common that huge masses of people need to be almost constantly available, active and not walled off to each other. That means no limits via settings, friend lists, block lists, feeds that only show who you follow, friction or time constraints, because then the free flow of “content” is disrupted and people spend less time on the app. That could also mean your friends and family drop off too, so you don’t stay there either, which means less eyes on ads and less data to harvest.

So of course they’d want to counter this possible risk with the notion that the average Joe needs to open himself up to the eyes of millions because “connection is good!” and maybe you’ll even go viral and earn money.

Don’t you wanna be “connected”? Why are you isolating yourself? You’re so weak for blocking that person, and you’re missing out by privating your profile or deactivating it, and you’re antisocial by not posting!

Meta went notoriously hard on pushing its capability to be hyperconnective:

In Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, she describes again and again how Mark Zuckerberg met with lots of important authorities and key political figures to underline how the platform could connect, just to get more users 1, without taking responsibility for what their platform would enable in some of the most heated regions - even hiding their role in the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election by pushing their narrative about openness and connection2. They also disregarded the setting not to import phone contacts and implemented the “People You May Know” feature3 to make more “connection” happen, jeopardizing people’s safety and privacy to do so.

In general, bringing internet to other disadvantaged and cut-off countries is a good thing, and they did launch Internet.org (now: Free Basics) to allegedly aid with that4; however, it quickly devolved into just providing rudimentary Facebook versions to these countries (Facebook Zero), becoming essentially the entirety of the internet in these places and therefore controlling it completely just to gain more users and influence5, and only pleaded with countries under the guise of connection to get unblocked, especially by China6. They even created a Connectivity Lab in 20147, invested in a Connectivity Declaration and spent over 1 Million dollars on full-page advertisements for it. They even got positive press by CNN and Reuters about pleading with the UN that connectivity over their platform could eradicate “global ills” like extreme poverty8.

Not only that, but as many probably already know, Meta has been pushing chatbots and fake AI profiles on their platforms (especially Instagram) for a year or so now. The goal is to keep you there still, as less and less people actually talk to each other while just passively consuming content. As the net gets taken over by bots, what’s the advantage of connecting with them? Connection at all costs huh, even if there’s no human involved? That is where the idea of it starts to crumble and fall apart.

Which is why the need for connectivity in the way these companies mean it and push it is a big lie just to further their financial interests and has nothing to do with how humans actually pursue, facilitate and experience true connection, and we need to question it.

Discussions around isolation and viewership online are a bit skewed for me for that reason, especially when they happen outside of the mega-platforms and are about blogging, because they apply the marketing we internalized on social media to other spaces who don’t depend on this lie.

My friend Suliman said something very sweet recently about discoverability in the indie web:

“But what’s the point of a home on the internet if you’re living it alone? There’s a saying in Arabic that says “a Heaven without people is no Heaven” and I think it’s truer in our modern day than ever. We’re already so isolated, so why isolate ourselves even further?”

I think this is true for the offline context, but I am not convinced about how well it works for the online world. I am concerned this view on connection uncritically applied to online spaces is playing too much into the financial interests of Meta and others and is, at least partially, learned behavior from growing up on their platforms, and growing up in a capitalistic era that urges you to use everyone you know for professional networking, extracting favors and all to attain better work, housing, and donations.

I can only speak for myself, but the reason why I would be able to be completely alone, unread and ignored online is because I already get all the connection I need offline. Online is a bonus, or a fallback. Not to mention that it could overlap and only my offline relationships could read my blog. Would that not be enough?

Connections I have offline are people I can visit flea markets with, play board games with, we share beds and food and I can rely on them when I’m sick. Meanwhile, the online people I am supposed to crave being connected to en masse can give me an upvote, and an email - which is very appreciated, but it is just not on the same level.

Online people absolutely can become offline people, as I met my wife online and have had good internet friends. But that, as shown above, has nothing to do with the widespread passive consumption and access that is presented under the guise of connection by these giants who abuse it. I don’t feel connected by simply witnessing someone exist; neither on social media, nor around the blogosphere.

To me, saying I need people online to notice me to not be isolated is like telling me I need to go to Times Square on New Years Eve to not be lonely. All that will happen is that I’d feel lonely while surrounded by other people and noise. We should not value quantity over quality, and I don’t want to pretend that the attention economy that these companies have instilled to further their own power is my way to find true connection.

Reply via email Published 30 Nov, 2025

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#2025 [#social media](https://blog.avas.space/blog/?q=social media)