I see a lot of resentment and projection in people’s comments.
And most of the time the ,comments are useless and don’t represent the general consumer/citizen opinion.
This is specially true for anonymous profiles
Mental health is notoriously declining and I myself feel the difference when there are days where I don’t touch social media.
I also found that some social media affect me more than others, namely X.
Before the acquisition I remember feeling like I was under an authoritarian regime censoring everything and that made me feel bitter.
After Elon there were short periods where there were no bots, and the algo was actually adapting to me, I didn’t feel bad using it.
But right now its so toxic and full of fear mongering posts, making it unbearable.
I hope society figures this out quickly because AI is only quickening the decline.
20 yrs ago, most of the Internet users were teenagers and very young adults.
Most of these people are in their late 30s to 40s now. Did new kids join too? Sure! But if you look at the birth rates of our societies, you'll notice that it's a bell curve. Consequently, the average age is going up.
Furthermore, there is a strong selection bias with this demographic: the happier they're, the less likely they're going to be on these platforms, because they'll prioritize family, hobbies or whatever else over ... Well... "shit posting with random strangers".
Ultimately you're left with a significant chunk of people that are often disgruntled, jaded or outright mentally unwell.
It takes curated communities in order to overcome. Some places do better than others. It's also all to easy for biases to become policy in some of these communities/sites which can wind up almost worse than the shit posting to begin with.