I've heard someone say that this has been going on since 2012, because that is the year that 60% of all Americans (and probably most industrialized countries), owned a smartphone. This is qualitatively different from 60% of all Americans owning a computer (the smartphone and tablet, IMHO, is one of the greatest embarrassments of the tech industry: it is a practically sci-fi device that does _less_ than the clunky desktop computers, _by design_, even though they could probably do _more_[0]). The tech companies are feeding people misleading, enraging, and toxic content because this creates a strong emotional reaction, which is the first step to selling advertised products. For example, nobody will buy a thing they can't rationally justify, unless they can justify it emotionally[1].

[0]: For example, you can create pretty decent art on the wacom tablets, but that is such a niche use case. There are probably other use cases that are unrealized, because it might distract the precious users from their push notifications and doom-scrolling.

[1]: Which for the most part is _reactive_. It used to be that companies would invest in industrial design (or visual design) to make an aesthetically appealing product. The problem, is that this is very expensive, and difficult to repeat, because there is not exactly a science of aesthetics (nothing beyond philosophy of phenomenology and also some eastern philosophies). And so, companies use the only strategy that can scale: rage-bait, doomerism, etc. Somehow, I do not think that the executives and shareholders of these companies consume the same information diet (how many cigarette company shareholders and executives are chain smokers?). Maybe alignment requires that the people who sell a product are legally required to integrate it into their lifestyle (I wonder how many sex-toy-company executives and shareholders would abandon ship).