While ultimately text content will always have a place, I do worry that video content could become way more popular, and text content much less so: simply because advertisers have a big incentive to push video content (bigger ads, more front and centre), and content producers are usually going to cater to the advertisers (unless people start paying for content more often).

I don't see the appeal of TikTok (though I haven't tried it), I much prefer skimming text than skimming through videos (let alone with sound). But it is incredibly popular, and a ton of people find video content addictive. To my surprise it isn't just popular among youth, but I have older smart senior software engineer friends (who didn't grow up surrounded by optimally addictive apps) who say it's amazing, at least once you let the algorithm converge.

So we shouldn't just assume that text will always prevail. Look at other seemingly amazing technologies/mediums that largely died or were at least hidden from the mainstream due to business reasons. These may be weak examples (I just woke up) but hopefully the gist of it is clear:

* RSS?

* I remember hearing that the alternatives to VHS and maybe blu-ray were technically superior but lost due to business reasons.

* Maybe Windows too, beat out technically superior alternatives because of business reasons

* Google+ apparently had a number of innovative features (like "circles"), but I barely know anyone who used it over facebook back in the day)

Now of course text content couldn't just "die", but perhaps the main companies hosting content could give strong incentives to produce video content instead of text, and control what the vast majority of people see. From what I understand: content producing companies (like CollegeHumor) that were super popular before Facebook were basically screwed when Facebook was the main way that people discovered content. Even though it was still possible to visit their website, the majority (or at least many) people would just watch whatever videos showed up on their facebook feed, so CollegeHumor took a huge hit. (I think that was what I read a while ago, anyway. I forget a lot of details so please correct me or add more information)

That scares the hell out of me: if a few tech companies ultimately control what the majority of people see, the content producers are basically chosen by the tech companies' algorithms. And the algorithms are ultimately going to optimize for profit, and not "quality content" or even "content that isn't harmful". (And more relevant to the comment I'm responding to: favouring ad heavy video over text). Potential up side: maybe it will be easier to filter out crap content if it all goes to video.