“Where’s the sex?” This is the question me and my friends would fire away each time a new social network came along during the Web 2.0 era. Back then, social media sites would come and go pretty fast.
We weren’t just being childish. We are hardwired to form relationships of many kinds1, and social media channels tap into that need. A new social network that didn’t allow for a more intimate or physical relationship of some kind wasn’t going to last long. This was our hypothesis, and it proved true a few times2. And sex has been a driving force since the early days of commercial internet access.
The porn industry grew with the rise of technology from the Polaroid to the VCR.3And I vaguely remember hearing that, in the early days of the web, porn websites were running on Linux4 servers, thus contributing to open-source and free software. This was because serious companies like Microsoft didn’t want to be involved.
Let’s jump to 2024 and it’s no wonder OnlyFans is doing so well. Matthew Ball5 has a breakdown of the company’s financials and the numbers are impressive.
In 2024, OnlyFans generated $6.3 billion in gross revenues, up from $300 million five years earlier. Over 60% of consumer spending is now via transactions, with subscription revenues up only 9% since 2021.
Source: Matthew Ball, Breaking Down OnlyFans’ Stunning Economics
The web is an ecosystem and the influence of OnlyFans (OF) can be seen in other social networks. The “link in bio” leads to an OF profile often; on TikTok Adult Content creators created the meme “I’m an accountant”, and on Instagram boudoir photographers and models use similar tactics to drive people to their Patreon accounts. I guess Patreon is classier than OF.
And while a Puritan may cringe at the thought of someone selling pornography, the truth is that OF creators seem to have more agency and profit. As do sex workers who rely on the web to stay safe.
The ability to thoroughly screen potential clients online prevents countless incidents of rape, assault, robbery, and murder. Sex workers share databases of known dangerous clients, harassment incidents, and other safety tips. Platforms like Tryst and Switter even integrate screening directly, requiring clients to provide work and identity verification.
Source: Joan Westenberg, When social media silences sex workers, we all lose.
Escort and sex work websites go as far as providing a reputation ranking for clients and workers.
Meanwhile, in Social Media Disneyland
Instagram is known for the battle against that scourge which is the female nipple, locking out accounts whose content is too erotic or too explicit by their standards.
On September 17th Meta announced restrictions to underage Instagram users.
teenagers who use the app will be subject to a slew of new restrictions, as well as increased parental oversight. Under the new policy, accounts made or owned by anyone under the age of 18 will have limited functionality by default—a bid, the company says, to give parents “peace of mind that their teens are safe with the right protections in place.”
Source: The Atlantic, The Biggest Change to Instagram in Years
In parallel, TikTok stood its ground during the 2023 congressional hearings when asked about its parental controls.6
On Twitter/X, there was no policy about pornography until June 2024 when Elon Musk made it clear they would allow for consensual adult content7. I’m guessing X doesn’t want to go the way of the Tumblr.
But life isn’t all about pornography and sex, right? We crave meaningful relationships and love. Social media is, at first thought, a good way to broaden our social life and meet new people in that pursuit. Ok Cupid, Match.com, and Ashley Madison aren’t just some of the websites for online dating, they were here before Grindr became the first mobile dating app and Tinder gamified matchmaking.
Left, left, right, left, right, MATCH!
Tinder’s advantage was that it connected to the person’s Facebook account, allowing for fewer fake profiles on the app, and the option to hide from friends and family when subscribing to premium features. Sounds great.
But as the popularity of Tinder grew, problems started to creep in and other apps made a debut promising to solve them.
The gamification of love brought a problem of overabundance. “Maybe I can find better.” And surfaced a problem of unequal competition for heterosexuals, there are usually more men than women in these apps according to Pew Research8.
It isn’t surprising that men are more likely to pay for premium features and that women are more likely to feel frustrated and overwhelmed. How would you react if everyone at the bar would come over to say they wanted to get to know you?
Hinge, and Bumble wanted to create a more welcoming environment for online dating. Bumble was betting on better profiles and letting women get the upper hand by not allowing men to send the first message. It eventually backfired because women thought it was too much of a burden to message first.9
Hinge redently announced an ad campaign, “the dating app designed to be deleted” 10, and I am skeptic. How can any of these apps promise to deliver long term relationships when their whole business model requires them to retain paying users?11
How will they refrain from tweaking their algorithms to keep us hooked on yet another match? “15 other people liked your profile, upgrade to find out who they are!”
I work and teach in Public Relations and sometimes I joke about it, “if we could trust companies, I would be out of a job.”
At least we can trust each other
For the most part, at least. Right? Well maybe unless they are influencers of some sort whose audience is sequestered by some kind of social network that evolves to keep us engaged.
Instagram doubled the number of photos that users can have in their carrousels posts. Again, nurturing the overabundance of content.
Jennifer Lopez’s recent Instagram post featuring a diverse array of personal photos reflects a growing trend on the platform: the ‘photo dump’. Instagram recently doubled the maximum number of photos allowed in users’ carousels from ten to twenty, encouraging sprawling collections of images. This trend, popular among Gen Z users, has shifted the platform’s focus from careful curation to showcasing the ‘detritus’ of users’ lives. This trend has its roots in the pandemic when people began sharing multiple images at
Source: The New Yorker, The Desperation of the Instagram Photo Dump
Those who depend on the reach of their posts are forced to follow the whims of the algorithm and participate in the tactics that keep us tied to our phones.
This attention market is profitable for brands, and for us, it’s a social vortex.
Even before social media was a. thing, fake internet points were an easy way to keep people coming back. Reddit, Hacker News, and other online forums rewarded users with different sorts of rankings and badges. Something as simple as a post count was enough to warrant a measure of reputation.
Instagram Likes, LinkedIn reactions, and other signals, are a proxy of social approval by our peers and strangers. Of course, they are a poor substitute, but give us a close enough feeling of “love” or at least kindness, and surely a small external validation.
When I first heard Linkin Park’s new single, “The Emptiness Machine”, it felt like a critique of the current state of how we communicate and get trapped in this algorithmic loop of social media. Maybe that’s not what the band had in mind, but it fits. Experience shows us that to please the gods of the algorithm is to publish often and to engage in any way possible. We give it “content” and that Emptiness Machine gives us “reach”, “likes”, and other kinds of fake internet points.
Are we content with the content we get?
Instagram, TikTok, and other social media channels turn these fake internet points into real money from brands and ads, so it’s no surprise that some of us are chasing that rainbow. It’s like a game. In every game with enough players, someone will try to cheat. When Google AdSense was the moneymaker and blogs were the hype, we saw link farms and all sorts of SEO-optimised sites meant for ad views alone.
Some of these sites and blogs were known for publishing press releases in their entirety.
Then came YouTube, Facebook and the iPhone, giving everyone a device good enough to broadcast their life in real-time. The Influencers were here and not all of them were as genuine as they made it look. The movie “Fake Famous” is a behind-the-scenes perspective on how much social media can be artificial.
Can we even tell the difference between genuine content anymore? I don’t think I can be 100% sure, and as we enter the age of AI content, it will be harder and harder each time.
A while back I shared a video on how AI tools can be used to automate a content strategy. As these tools improve, we risk losing diversity and quality in the content available to us.
This isn’t just a problem with influencers and high-profile people; everyone curates their social media presence into a pristine picture. “Everybody lies” (House, 2004). LinkedIn, the social network where everyone is a winner, is the best example of how we curate and spin content to suit our career goals. There is even a subreddit to showcase “insufferable LinkedIn content”12.
When we meet someone online and then in person, we worry about how much they match the expectations we’ve created from their dating profile, their Instagram feed, their DMs, and even their choice of emojis.
We are trapped in a weird social web
If you’ve made it this far, you’ve realised that this is about how much social media is entrenched in our relationships. Sex, love, friendship, and work, are mere areas where each algorithm from a big corp tries to turn us into interfaces to get something out of us13.
They promise us a way to reach our goals if we play their game, and deep down, we know that it’s not with our best interest in mind. It’s a lure. And it’s bizarre that in this digital landscape, the porn industry appears to be the most honest in its promise and delivery. There are obvious issues of consent, abuse, exploitation, and other heavy concerns, but it doesn’t play the innocent player. Unlike Instagram, which took over a decade to implement parenting safeguards, ignoring growing evidence of the effects of social media on mental health14.
And as the ease of publishing content online grows, the quality and substance of that content seems to fade. One can argue that the TikTok format of 3-minute videos promotes insubstantial content while at the same time breaking our capacity to focus for long. Same for microblogging platforms like Twitter/X.
Unable to find meaning in the overabundance of content, and sometimes struggling to find purpose in our days, we turn to dating apps.
Looking to escape this Emptiness Machine, we echo the same thing in our bios and dating profiles.
“I am looking for a connection”
Tumblr’s demise was a good example of this. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/08/13/sad-demise-tumblr-1bn-social-network-ended-selling-less-3m/ ↩︎
The Atlantic, Before Sexting, There Was Polaroid ↩︎
Matthew Ball is the CEO of Epyllion, a diversified holding company which makes angel investments, provides advisory services, and produces television, films, and video games. ↩︎
NPR, Lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO Chew for 5 hours in a high-stakes hearing about the app ↩︎
NPR, Elon Musk’s X is allowing users to post consensual adult content, formalizing a prior Twitter policy ↩︎
Pew Research, Dating Apps and Online Dating Sites ↩︎
Forbes, Men Can Now Initiate Conversations On Bumble—Here’s Why It Matters ↩︎
Hinge, Hinge celebrates singles breaking up with their profiles in its latest ad campaign ↩︎
New York Times, Dating Apps Have Hit a Wall. Can They Turn Things Around? ↩︎
Luciano Floridi presented the idea of “Marketing as Control of Human Interfaces and Its Political Exploitation”. I agree and believe we can extend it to most, if not all, of social media channels that rely on algorithms to keep us
trappedengaged. ↩︎Springer, Behavioural symptoms of mental health disorder such as depression among young people using Instagram: a systematic review ↩︎