And it was. For a while. Soon enough, the advertisements and the activism took over. People only posted in Stories, and the inevitable race-to-the-bottom to have the highest followers/likes took over. A friend, who ran fitness gigs on the side, told me how a top branded sports marketer were willing to sponsor his shoes for a certain number of follows and likes on his post, with their brand mentions. Somehow all these appears to be a perverted, caricature of an idealistic life.
I got sick of it and i haven’t used it since the beginning of this year. I understand that as I grow older, part of this is feeded by cynicism of having seen similar patterns in the past, starting with IRC chat rooms to whatever is the trend this year. But, the in-your-face commercialisation and incentives for users to keep generating content forever all appears very dystopian to me.