Doom Scroll

Don'cha love a duck on a skateboard,
Or maybe a dog in a hat?
Just scroll this way six hours a day,
- Wanna buy a calico cat?

You deny you've got an addiction,
Sat there at the wheel of your car,
Will you survive your scroll 'n' drive?
- D'ya wanna hire a barrister?

But just you keep on scrollin'
So I get my just deserts,
Each time you swipe I make a buck,
I don't care who it hurts.

Though I tell everyone I do...
Though I tell everyone I do.

If you like masculinty toxic,
We gotta lotta that 'round here,
So scroll on down through crazy town,
- Hey boy! wanna buy a John Deere?

So you think that your life is worthless,
What made you so dismayed,
Doom-scrolling through folks low as you?
- D'ya wanna buy a razor blade?

But just you keep on scrollin'
So I get my just deserts,
Each time you swipe I make a buck,
I don't care who it hurts.

Though I tell everyone I do...
Though I tell everyone I do.

Yeah, look at me making billions,
Outta hamsters just like you,
How does it feel to spin my wheel,
- Hey! wanna buy a share or two?

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[notes]
Digital content providers make their money from advertisers and
provide the service to end users for "free". No big secret there,
plus companies have legitimate stuff to sell and it's as good a way
as any.

Some users object to having their personal data strip-mined for commercial
use, others are more blasé. If an advertising algorithm knows who you are,
where you are, what you like and how much money you probably have it can offer
you "appropriate" products and services you may have been unaware of.

The part less discussed is the way most big platorms handle content that it
"thinks" you might like. Or rather, content that it believes will keep you
scrolling... because this is directly proportional to how much money they
can make. Each time you scroll down a page another little "billboard" is
created and they can charge someone to put an ad on it.

So most of what they do tends to be geared around keeping you scrolling,
more screen time = more money. This inevitably leads to addiction, something
that the medical profession is now (10 years late) beginning to study seriously.
Yes, there is an impact on education etc but it's also causing major problems
on roads because too many people can't leave their 'phones alone when driving.
1 in 3 teens in the USA admit to doing it and deaths due to "distracted driving"
have increased sharply since smartphone's have been around.

Aside from the addiction is the way in which the platforms automatically funnel
"similar" content at users. Naturally, this makes users look at more and creates
more scroll downs and screen time ($$!) - fine if that content is ducks on
skateboards (I guess...) not so fine if it's harmful in some way. "Here are some
more fun posts about the suicide/pipe bombs/misogyny you like."

Of course it's always a matter of degree when you consider individual posts and
freedom of speach and expression is extremely important. But the issue here is
that objectors need to specifically identify problem posts and then (maybe) they'll
get acted on but only after they've done their harm and have been replaced by others.
To be fair, the people who created the platforms didn't necessarily envisage having
to deal with half the world.

Although it's the current "bogey-man" of many, greater use of AI is likley the best way of
policing content but the root of the problem is clearly "dog-piling" bad stuff on
vulnerable people and stopping that would entail a change in the way the content algo's
work - or limiting individuals' screen time. And that'll hurt the bottom line so
it ain't gonna happen any time soon.

Anyway, that's what I was on about in the lyric. That and people focussing on the wrong problem.

It's certainly not political with a large "P" but it might still get banned on W/L.
If it does, I will find the irony delicious. So there's that.

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