I remember years ago when Mr. Metokur called what was happening to the internet a "serendipitous conspiracy" where a bunch of megacorporation's work to sanitize the internet because they don't want someone saying the gamer word under a sponsored ad for the latest Nissan Altima since that might make them look bad. If I recall his conclusion was that they would go about this by just doing the same crap they were doing back then, tightening restrictions, rewriting and reinterpreting rules, etc. But now in the 2020s it's pretty clear what the path towards that is; filling your feed with so much bland, inoffensive AI slop that it's physically impossible for social media to hurt a brand's image. To say nothing of the obvious socio-political reasons behind this as well.

The dead internet isn't a theory anymore.