"At first glance, these are powerful accelerators. They help creators scale presence, build brand visibility, and squeeze more from every post. But here's the paradox: Flywheel The social media flywheel, at its core, runs on 3 things. Creators make content → driving engagement and value (brand awareness, ad revenue, ego metrics). Humans → visiting the platform, and consuming content. Platforms sell ads + data → which pays for the infrastructure and teams behind them."
"While AI is helping content creators maximise engagement, the content that is created is more likely to be consumed by AI-bots.AI-bots engaging with AI-bots doesn't create real value because: Data from AI-bots can't be sold. Ads watched by AI-bots won't generate revenue. Engagement faked by AI-bots erodes human trust. The Human Response: Shrinking Engagement. Already, we see people losing faith in social media. Scroll long enough and it all starts to feel inauthentic, even uncanny."
Engagement automation tools like auto-liking, AI-generated DMs, scheduled posting, and timing prediction enable creators to scale presence and amplify apparent engagement. Much of the amplified activity is consumed by AI-bots rather than humans, producing data that cannot be monetized and ads that do not generate real revenue. Fake engagement undermines human trust and reduces genuine interaction, weakening the social media flywheel that relies on creators, human consumers, and platform monetization. As trust declines, users migrate to smaller, intimate, interest-based spaces such as Slack, Discord, and private messaging apps where interactions remain human-driven and authentic.
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