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The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

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The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

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Louis Barclay
Apr 26, 2024
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The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

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That little button, the one saying 'follow'? It's lying to you.

The follow lie is a classic tale of enshittification that's occurred
on nearly every social media platform. It's pretty simple:

You join a social media platform and find some people who interest
you. You tap follow (or 'Add friend', 'Like page', 'Subscribe'),
because you want to see their content. For a while, everything works
just fine. You see your best friend's wedding photos, your favourite
blogger's posts.

Soon though, the follow lie kicks in. Something happens. You start
seeing a lot less of people you follow, and a lot more of people you 
don't follow. But you're still stuck on the platform, because of all
that time you've invested in following people there (after all, you
still see some of their content) -- and a lot of the new stuff you get
shown, from people you don't follow, is addictive. It keeps you
scrolling to see what's up next. The platform benefits by slipping in
more and more ads around the content.

This is terrible for consumers like you, but it's also terrible for
creators. They invested a lot of time and effort in getting people to
follow them on the platform, and now they realize what a waste it
was.

Here's a means of following that isn't vulnerable to
enshittification. Try it out:

[                    ]
Subscribe
Most often the follow lie is a boiling frog, but sometimes the rug
gets pulled from underfoot very suddenly. I remember when this
happened to me with Underground Magazine, a satirical publication
(like The Onion) that some friends and I launched in 2012. At some
point in (I think) 2013, practically overnight, Facebook stopped
showing our content to our page's 1,000 fans unless we paid. We
started reaching just 50 people with each post. Almost every
publication on Facebook at that time has a similar story (and things
got a whole lot worse from then on).

The follow lie is an example of history endlessly repeating itself.
It happens time and time again on every single platform. I've
recently heard of TikTok stars with millions of followers struggling
to get even 5,000 views on their videos -- a conversion of just 0.5%
to people who explicitly opted in to following you!

In this era, any creator with a strategy around follows on a platform
needs to exercise extreme caution. That's because things are getting
worse: nearly all social media platforms are now prioritizing the
interest graph, instead of the social graph.

The interest graph doesn't care who you follow. The interest graph
uses data on the exact content you consume (down to how much of a
video you watch) to serve up the content candy it knows will get you
hooked. So for both consumers and creators, that means following is
more of a sham than ever -- following is practically irrelevant to the
platform's intentions for you. TikTok caused our present day spiral
towards the interest graph, by showing that it's by far the most
effective way to dominate consumers' attention.

What can you do in response? As both a creator or a consumer, use
newsletters. Rely on email to show you content from people you're
interested in.

It's not perfect, and big tech can still cause you problems -- for
instance, for Gmail users, a lot of your emails may end up in the
Promotions tab dustbin (check it regularly to see what's ended up
there).

But it's a hell of a lot better than continuing to believe in the
follow lie.

And if you want to try that out in practice, why not here?

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        Rupert Barclay
        11 hrs ago

        Another brilliant insightful letter from Louis. This so
        clearly exposes the limitations of large platforms for
[https] building a meaningful community and audience and how valuable
        platforms like Substack and Patreon are.

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        Madis Mark
        7 hrs ago*edited 7 hrs ago

        As a consumer, I personally would love to only see the
        content I have chosen. But as a creator, I like the idea of
        reaching new people who aren't following me yet, presuming it
[https] would align with their interests. What would be a better
        solution for the creators to reach new people, but at the
        same time respect people's own choices?

        Expand full comment
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