The "User-Generated Content" Ruse

Instagram is a media production company:

The story of social media ever since has been a story of the refinement of feeds as a media product aimed at capturing and holding an audience. The platforms have invested billions of dollars in designing those feeds—what they contain, how they look, how they work—to make them as “engaging” as possible. To argue that the companies are still in the business of transmitting “user-generated content” is absurd. They’re not carriers anymore; they’re media companies. Yes, users still contribute posts and comments—though even those, in today’s era of influencers, creators, and AI, are often subsidized and actively shaped by the companies—but the essential content of social media is now the feeds produced by the platforms, not the individual messages posted by users. Go to Instagram and scroll through your feed. It’s obvious that what you’re experiencing is not discrete bits of user-generated content. It’s an elaborate, finely tuned media production manufactured by Instagram for an audience of one: you

What I hate most is when companies try to turn my media into a feed for their product.

The feed is the content, and the social media company is its publisher. Period.