>And the algorithms are ultimately going to optimize for profit, and not "quality content" or even "content that isn't harmful".
If people value quality content, quality content will be rewarded. If people don't care it won't. Some people just want to have a laugh and don't care about the production value of the video.
I hope so, and perhaps to some extent quality content always will be rewarded in some circles of the internet. But I worry about the vast majority just falling prey to whatever is most convenient. Maybe it will always be possible to have "traditional" websites, but if only something like 0.1% of the population visits them, and the rest just mindlessly scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever the "metaverse" is supposed to be, then that seems like a problem.
I have never tried to make money producing content on the internet. But I have found a few good content producers who make podcasts and post them to YouTube. I wish that they would also post transcripts and have an RSS feed, but they don't really have any incentive to do that. And I can't blame them: I don't think I would really pay any extra for it. And unless there are better content producers who show up and do those things, I'll probably still keep watching the same podcasts on YouTube.
So I am concerned that all the best content producers just doing whatever will make them money, and:
* ultimately they will probably produce content and host it with a big company.
* And that big company will probably do whatever it can to maximize profits
* (and presumably content providers will typically favour the company that pays them the best).
* And I worry that video content can make way, way more money than text, at least for certain content types.
Certainly I'm probably overstating the issues, but I think there's some truth to this. Look at what happens when you look up cooking recipes on the internet: you almost always get a big article and a bunch of garbage that no one wants. I think I read somewhere that they do that because a recipe can't be copyrighted without an article. If that's true, why isn't there a nice clean recipe site that doesn't have all the garbage in it? Perhaps even with a nifty database where I can filter based on ingredients and stuff that I have? I think the answer is that (#1) I don't look for new recipes that often, and (#2) I am willing to tolerate skimming through some garbage on the rare occasions that I do.
If people value quality content, quality content will be rewarded. If people don't care it won't. Some people just want to have a laugh and don't care about the production value of the video.