Platform dominance replaced quality curation with post-hoc algorithmic payment for hits

Evidence

Much of Buzzfeed’s success, however, was ultimately the success of its hosts, Facebook and YouTube. These platforms, not individual websites, had become the backbone of the internet, reshaping the logic of cultural creation. After brief experiments in elite curation, platforms embraced a laissez-faire approach, prioritizing user numbers and “watch time” over quality content. The twentieth-century content industry’s former strategy of investments in auteurs and innovators as the potential hitmakers of tomorrow gave way to full algorithmic optimization. Teenagers were filming amateur videos in their bedrooms that repeatedly drew larger audiences than the work of professional studios. And so there was no need to invest in the creation of content; platforms only had to pay creators after the video was a hit. This invited a flood of bland, search-optimized materials from speculators with little interest in art or culture. Content farms like Famous Birthdays, which cataloged celebrities’ personal details, outperformed legacy institutions like Entertainment Weekly and Teen Vogue. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 519

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core ‘omnivore monoculture’ argument — this is the distribution-collapse mechanism driving flattened taste. — connects to: Platform reward structures incentivize negative and divisive content over constructive content — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 459
• SEED: Strong supporting evidence for the counter-case essay questioning whether blankness is real: shows the mechanism whereby algorithmic post-hoc payment rewards speculators, not artists.