Why the legacy social media model of bigtech is destined for the dumpster

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 18:06:22 -0400 last edited: Tue, 22 Jul 2025 01:31:18 -0400 from ArrCay

Practically all bigtech (and most newer "alternative") platforms use the "free"-for-all, ad revenue model. The problem is that this model leads to a garbage platform.
The following example is rather typical of the high percentage of garbage posts/content, many of which (including this one) are AI generated now, found on practically any platform using the "free"-for-all model.

This AI-alien has three hands and some strange fingers, and on that planet there must be some weird physics for those oval tractor tires. 🙄

Bigtechs have mostly convinced the general public that [whatever service they provide] is the greatest thing since sliced bread and that this model for everything, including social media platforms, is "normal" or the "only way". It has worked for news media, radio, television, etc. for generations, so why not, right? And it worked for Google; but what was, once upon a time, a very good search engine is now practically useless.

Practically every "free"-for-all platform is now plagued with fake accounts posting things like the above example. To go on a brief tangent:

The related scam to the above 'single female, blah blah blah' example is a long game of personal data harvesting, under the pretext of building a relationship, with an attempt to get a big payout either directly via some sympathy ploy, etc. or through some other method based on the data harvesting. Though they probably are more sucessful at getting bites with better AI pics or with using a bunch of similar pics of real people, etc. that they lifted from other sites.

It's not just the outright scam bait of the example I chose. Some posts may be part of the appear to be a 'normal' real user as I mention later, others could be paid-for spam - usually for some less than reputable business, if not an actual scam and of course there's plenty of fake gofundme scammers.

The evidence has been pretty clear on certain platforms for many years.

For example, take the one I call Fecesbook (because it is now quite a cesspool). I won't even go into the privacy issues, selling user data, violation of FTC orders that has them in the news again. For now, let's just consider the basic ad stuff. In addition to the typical advertising plastered everywhere and injected into one's feed/stream, a few years ago they started a different kind of ad posting that appears like any other normal post. I don't recall what it's technically called but I believe the option to buy such paid posts are available to anyone. While there may on rare occasion be a legit individual or small business attempting some real advertising/marketing, these posts are mostly bought by spam/scam/fake accounts. What matters to bigtechmegacorp (aka Meta, in this case) most is revenue.

Spam, spam, scammer, spam, fake account, spam, scam and spam

The "free"-for-all part of the model allows spam/scam/fake accounts to register because the new account filtering and registration controls are very minimal to none whatsoever - typically any working email account is sufficient. The reason this is not a concern is because the artificially inflated userbase numbers, created by allowing any/every account, is good for business. More users = more ad revenue.

This is also why they allow spam/scam/fake accounts to remain on the platform. Unless the account is doing something which costs more than what they are making from it, they have no real incentive to remove/cancel it. A hundred people could report such an account and nothing happen because that spam/scam account is either a paying customer (as I noted above regarding the Fecesbook covert ad posts), or they otherwise represent income (eg. they count towards impressions for ads where that metric means income, they increase 'engagement' from other accounts, etc.). Now if those hundred accounts just leave and close their accounts specifically referencing scammer XYZ as the reason or start some legal process, then maybe bigtechmegaco will tell scammer XYZ; you gotta go... wink wink... but feel free to just create another account... nod nod. As long as the revenue is positive, spam/scam/fake accounts and their junk posts/content are tolerated.

Stalker - Stalking

The Follower/Following, more appropriately Stalker/Stalking, standard of social media connections only exacerbates the "free"-for-all model. While that mode of operation may be ok for certain public figure types, it ignores the typical rules of social interaction in real life. Though I suppose it helps push the "you too can be a creator/influencer" line.

One of the first things a new spam/scam/fake account does is to follow as many other accounts as it can; and attempt to get followers. Basically the goal is to appear like an average real user. On many platforms there is no way to prevent such users from stalking (following) you. The only real option is to block that account. As noted above, using the reporting feature is often an exercise in futility. On the other hand having to go through the process of adding hundreds of accounts to a blocklist just seems ridiculous. From a server/database admin point of view it's rather stupid to have a large number of real/legit users with a large number of fake/scam/spam accounts in their blocklists. Sure, if/when the fake account gets shut down it can be dropped from all the blocklists, but by then there's been how many more added to the lists. The whole thing sounds like the definition of insanity.

One answer, maybe the only answer, to the fake/scam/spam account problem is to not allow them to register in the first place and have zero tolerance for such accounts. There are blacklists of email addresses (and IP addresses) which are known to be used by sc(p)ammers for registering scam/spam/fake accounts. Here at ArrCay such blacklists are in use. These lists are updated often and there's still around 100 attempts a month that slip past, but upon human review don't get approved for registration.

Now imagine if I just allowed any/every account to register here ["free"-for-all] - there would be thousands of fake/spam/scam accounts. ArrCay is still hardly known to anyone, but without registration controls the vast majority of the userbase would currently be garbage accounts - a whole bunch of scammers mostly trying to scam each other. Now let's throw in ad revenue.

Yo advertisers and regular people, Check it, ArrCay hasn't even started a marketing campaign and it's already got thousands of active users. Buy/Join now for the best spots/usernames.... blah blah blah

The old "fake it 'til you make it" startup method. Once the ad revenue starts rolling in, it's off to the races... Of course, I'd have to spin up a few dozen or so bot accounts of my own to keep the scam accounts busy and convince the real users that they're not alone with a bunch of scammers posting public spam and constantly making connection requests to them. There's enough people that don't recognize the fake accounts anyway, and those that do have usually accepted it as normal. It could work... Well, I'd probably have to make some changes to the homepage and oh yeah delete this post and probably others... might even have to change some core features to accomodate that model of operations.

OK, nah... on second thought, let's not go there.
We'll continue on...

To get back on track,
Privacy and permissions features either don't exist or are some after-thought feature that was patched in, ala Fecesbook. IOW, it's not really great but it's better than nothing. Such features may be one of the very few reasons there are still 'real' people using Fecesbook. Another might be the restricted (non-public) groups which still have decent moderators. Last I checked those appeared to be getting quite rare.

Another reason the bigtech model is obsolete is the centralized closed system (monolithic, walled-garden) design. The "free"-for-all/ad-revenue model pretty much demands exclusive (dead-end) accounts on the system. Most of the industry has stuck with this 'create yet another account just to access xyz's service' way of doing things. So people have just gotten used to it "being the way it is". Although there have been several "Single Sign On" schemes in existence for many years, there hasn't been much widespread adoption. Oauth has some use across certain bigtech services. Though it isn't really for cross-platform authentication. It is more a method of proxy delegation - basically allowing one site/app to access another on behalf of the user. To the average user it kinda looks like the site is logged into using their other bigtechco account, but it's not technically. Maybe I'll try to expound on this and see if I can simplify it later.

The overall identity management solution provided by the Nomad and OpenWebAuth protocols (as used here at ArrCay and several other platforms) is a better idea that's been around for quite a few years now. While the login account itself, on ArrCay or another compatible server/platform, is exclusive to that server; it is associated with what is called a "Channel" (an account may also have multiple Channels). This Channel is a unique cryptographically signed identity that is portable (aka a nomadic ID). It allows mirroring/cloning to multiple servers with near real-time sync. If you decide to move your "home" login account to another server (on any compatible platform), you can clone your nomadic ID to the new account and you won't lose anything. The Channel is yours - it can go with you and "live" on any server which uses this protocol.

The OpenWebAuth part provides authentication across various servers/platforms. You don't need another account to access any other server using this protocol. Login to your account/Channel and visits to any other server/platform are 'auto-magically' authenticated. You then have access to whatever content on that server that is available to any authenticated user as well as anything for which your Channel has been given specific permissions to access. If bigtechs used such protocols it would be like only having an account on one of them, say X, and being able to connect to another, say Fecesbook, like any other user and make connections which then allow you to see their photos, etc. and comment on posts, etc., etc. IOW, think of being able to use X, FB, IG, Tiktok, TS, Gettr, etc. and only having a single account on one of them - no need for a separate account for every one.

An interesting sidenote is that technically a similar feature is part of the core software that the Truth Social and Gab platforms are built on. They both were built/derived from Mastodon which is a decentralized cross-platform (aka Fediverse) capable software that uses ActivityPub - the de facto standard protocol that allows various Fediverse platforms to communicate with each other. Since ArrCay also 'speaks' ActivityPub, it can connect with Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms. However, while my account/Channels here can connect with other users/servers running Mastodon^note; the feature that allows the connection with other servers/platforms is disabled at Truth and Gab. They chose to close off their systems and use the bigtech "free"-for-all ad revenue model.

^Note - Mastodon is a pretty crappy software that is, unfortunately, the most well known Fediverse platform. It's a bloated, Ruby on Rails polished turd. It's also where most of the censor-happy "free speech" Twitter crowd went as I said in Twitter-Mastodon liberals, political theories, and Cluster B pandemic, before Bluesky became their latest "safe space". Bluesky apparently created their own federated protocol, though there is something called BridgyFed that allows connection with ActivityPub/Mastodon. I haven't looked into them enough to cover the details, but it appears that the purpose for their AT protocol was to create something like what the Nomad/Zot and OpenwWebAuth protocols have provided since before Dorsey started the Bluesky project at Twitter.

The full chart comparing ArrCay with Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky can be found on the ArrCay HomePage

The Nomad and OpenWebAuth features are currently only available here at ArrCay and a handful of related platforms that use the same family of core software. There has been talk of these protocols being adopted into ActivityPub at some point. I'd have to double check, but I believe discussion of this started, and FEP's (Fediverse Enhancement Proposal) were published before the AT protocol was created.

Another related tangent here is that Meta (the Fecesbook/Instawhoregram co.) has already created a Fediverse platform called Threads. So it would appear that even they have seen the writing on the wall. Many Fediverse server admins, including myself here, have already blocked Threads from connecting due to their data-harvesting and related bad behavior. It seems that despite their attempt to be part of the Fediverse, Threads may become similar to Truth or Gab; only in reverse and involuntarily because of other servers not allowing Threads to connect with them.

It's interesting to note that Jack Dorsey left Bluesky because it was "literally repeating all the mistakes" that Twitter made. He has also said

"I think the internet needs a decentralized protocol for social media."

That appeared in an article dated 2024 but maybe it was included as a previous quote, because I find it odd that he wouldn't be aware of several such protocols which have already been in use for many years.

Anyway, my first point in quoting Dorsey is that it seems the habits of the bigtech social media operating model die hard.
The second being a reiteration of this entire post and my closing statement.

The future of social media is decentralized cross-platform communications.

[This post/article may still receive edits, bookmark and check back for updates]

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