Offline with Jon Favreau Did Clickbait Kill Buzzfeed and the Digital Media Era?
10 snips
May 14, 2023 
AI Snips
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Transcript
Episode notes
Traffic-Driven Growth Was Fundamentally Fragile
- The race to chase viral traffic built the digital media era but made companies fragile when platform incentives shifted.
- BuzzFeed and peers relied on an ad-driven commodity model that collapsed as attention diluted and platforms changed algorithms.
The Next Internet Is Fragmented And Curated
- The internet is fracturing into many smaller, trust-based spaces rather than one global public square.
- Successful media will center trusted individual voices and curation, not mass viral reach.
Algorithm Tweaks Amplified Division
- Platform choices amplified divisive content by optimizing for engagement and sharing.
- Facebook's shifts (sharing → engagement) produced perverse incentives that boosted polarizing and misinterpretable posts.