The Silent Switch — A Stealthy Death for the Social Graph

How is the silent switch impact­ing your content?

As a PR adviser since 2005 and a digit­al strategist since 2007, I’ve seen the silent switch take over — one seam­less iter­a­tion after another.

In this blog art­icle, I explain how social media algorithms silently have been cent­ral­ised into a series of glob­al Pavlovian experiments.

As PR- and com­mu­nic­a­tions pro­fes­sion­als, we should all be aware of what has happened — and what’s still happening.

Let’s dive right in:

Having Subscribers is Becoming Less and Less Important

Like many oth­ers inter­ested in pho­to­graphy, I sub­scribe to the Canadian con­tent cre­at­or Peter McKinnon on YouTube. I’m not alone — 5,55 mil­lion sub­scribers fol­low McKinnon as I write this.

5,55 mil­lion is a respect­able audi­ence; mil­lions of YouTube users have act­ively chosen to fol­low McKinnon’s future updates.

Still, it’s not uncom­mon for McKinnon’s reg­u­lar videos to acquire only a few hun­dred thou­sand views.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not say­ing that a few hun­dred thou­sand views are some­thing to sneeze at. And I’m not say­ing we should feel sorry for online mega-influ­en­cers, either.

I’m ask­ing why acquir­ing social media sub­scribers, fans, and fol­low­ers seems less sig­ni­fic­ant today. After all, fol­low­ers drive most con­tent cre­at­ors to social media in the first place.

A few hun­dred thou­sand views is a lot — but it’s not 5,55 mil­lion. And it’s reas­on­able to assume that 5,55 mil­lion sub­scribers haven’t act­ively decided against watch­ing McKinnon’s video. The video just hasn’t been sug­ges­ted to them.

As fol­lows:

Earning many sub­scribers, fans, and fol­low­ers used to mat­ter a lot, but nowadays, it mat­ters less.

Another way of put­ting it: Although McKinnon has 5,55 mil­lion YouTube sub­scribers, it doesn’t mean his videos have that kind of reach. Something else is at play here.

The Silent Switch: The Death of Building Trust Over Time

So, why have Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many oth­er social net­works, gone through so much trouble to render sub­scribers, fans, and fol­low­ers less valu­able to con­tent creators?

Here’s a his­tor­ic­al explanation:

In the early days of social net­works, feeds relied on net­work-based dis­tri­bu­tion — the more cent­ral the net­work node, the great­er the reach.

Clean and classy. If you wanted a high­er reach, you had to earn an audi­ence by estab­lish­ing trust over a more exten­ded period.

Today, oth­er types of selec­tion cri­ter­ia are dom­in­at­ing our social media feeds. Reach is rewar­ded not to con­tent cre­at­or author­ity but to indi­vidu­al con­tent pieces based on their single performance.

Wait, What? Network- vs Algorithmic Distribution

We have slowly moved from net­work dis­tri­bu­tion based on con­tent cre­at­or author­ity to algorithmic dis­tri­bu­tion based on single con­tent performance.

Instead of show­ing users con­tent based on who they’ve decided to fol­low, algorithms expose audi­ences to single con­tent pieces based on stand­ard­ised con­tent tests.

The YouTube algorithm won’t show Peter McKinnon’s con­tent to all his 5,55 mil­lion subscribers.

Instead, YouTube shows a new McKinnon video to a small stat­ist­ic­al sub­set of users. If the video passes the small first test, the video is then shown to a slightly lar­ger stat­ist­ic­al subset.

And so on. 

The video could stop at 200,000 views — or climb to 2 bil­lion views. It depends on that single piece of con­tent, not how many fol­low­ers the cre­at­or has amassed. McKinnon’s 5,55 mil­lion sub­scribers are not as sig­ni­fic­ant in this new context.

Okay, so what?

Doesn’t a suc­cess­ful vlog­ger like McKinnon already enjoy a massive reach at his fin­ger­tips? Aren’t power­ful online influ­en­cers already mak­ing enough money?

Here, we’re enter­ing into con­tro­ver­sial territory:

Why Tech Giants Are Switching Away

There are three main reas­ons social media tech giants move from net­work dis­tri­bu­tion to algorithmic distribution:

1. There’s a clash of desired out­comes. Network dis­tri­bu­tion doesn’t max­im­ise the type of engage­ment (i.e. ad clicks and expos­ure) social media tech giants seek to promote.

Online audi­ences seek to dis­trib­ute their trust spar­ingly and fol­low cre­at­ors who will psy­cho­lo­gic­ally emphas­ise how they see them­selves — they don’t fol­low con­tent cre­at­ors to increase their spend­ing or ad exposure.

2. Advanced serv­er-side com­pu­ta­tion is expens­ive. The com­plex­ity of social media algorithms is typ­ic­ally over­stated; the media is con­stantly buzz­ing about machine learn­ing, neur­al net­works, and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

The prob­lem, how­ever, is that provid­ing advanced serv­er-side cal­cu­la­tions on user beha­viour in real-time is … expensive.

And apart from being expens­ive, this type of advanced ana­lyt­ics is likely to be GDPR-invas­ive and almost impossible to get right due to the com­plex­ity of human psy­cho­logy.

3. Control is power; power is money. The algorithmic dis­tri­bu­tion gives the social net­work more con­trol over engage­ment. As a con­sequence, this removes con­trol from both audi­ences and con­tent creators.

This Is the Money Web

I love the idea of the social web. I love the idea of a demo­crat­ic and neut­ral space where every­one has a voice, com­munit­ies can form unbound by geo­graph­ic­al con­straints, and every­one is connected.

“Here comes every­body,” Clay Shirky wrote.

Two dec­ades ago, the net­work-based Hippie Web (2005 – 2015) had a bur­geon­ing blo­go­sphere and lively for­ums where any­one dis­cussed ideas and joined togeth­er in com­munit­ies around causes and interests.

Social media optim­ists cited The Cluetrain Manifesto and fought for net neut­ral­ity. Sharing was caring.

The wide­spread notion was that inform­a­tion wanted to be free, an ideo­logy spear­headed by open-source enthu­si­asts. We saw the advent of Napster and The Pirate Bay.

The Hippie Web was fun, but it had to end at some point.
We weren’t mak­ing enough money, frankly.

Enter the Money Web (2016 – present).

Today, suc­cess­ful influ­en­cers can earn a full-time liv­ing as online con­tent cre­at­ors. Not only that — they can get rich. We have a new and grow­ing cre­at­ive class of enter­tain­ers and educators.

The digit­al eco­nomy is grow­ing, and we reward those who can attract people’s atten­tion. Monetisation allows con­tent cre­at­ors to go full-time, which is impossible oth­er­wise. Having algorithms designed to get people to click on ads is essential.

But the algorithm own­ers are set­ting the stage, not the cre­at­ives. Content must drive clicks, and cre­at­ors must pro­duce con­tent that drives those clicks.

“So what’s the Original Sin of the Internet? Nearly all busi­ness mod­els it sup­ports require spy­ing on con­sumers and mon­et­ising them.”
— Bob Sullivan, author and journalist 

Read also: Enter The Money Web (2016 – Present)

Sensationalism and Winner-Takes-All

The Silent Switch from net­work-based to algorithm-based dis­tri­bu­tion changes the game for every­one. Especially for us PR pro­fes­sion­als.

For those of us who cre­ate online con­tent on behalf of an organ­isa­tion, the effects of the silent switch can be devastating.

On the “clas­sic” pre-money social web, where earn­ing sub­scribers, fans, and fol­low­ers, even not-so-spec­tac­u­lar cor­por­ate con­tent found its way to reas­on­able audi­ence sizes.

But on today’s Money Web, where algorithmic dis­tri­bu­tion dis­reg­ards earn­ing trust over earn­ing clicks, sen­sa­tion­al­ism pre­vails in a win­ner-takes-all scenario.

In a way, the play­ing field today is lev­elled. As long as you’re pre­pared to invest heav­ily in the risky busi­ness of cre­at­ing the type of sen­sa­tion­al con­tent that ulti­mately drives ads, that is.

Theoretically, algorithmic dis­tri­bu­tion should pro­duce bet­ter con­tent through competition.

But what con­sti­tutes “bet­ter?”

The prob­lem under this new paradigm is fun­da­ment­al — loy­alty and trust are non-rewar­ded behaviours.

A Global Pavlovian Experiment on Humans

I hear many people dis­cuss­ing online influ­en­cers. There’s a fas­cin­at­ing — and often pro­vok­ing! — allure to them.

The pro­voca­tion is apparent:

Many suc­cess­ful con­tent cre­at­ors pro­duce not­able earn­ings by churn­ing out sen­sa­tion­al content.

In a sense, the phe­nomen­on is not nov­el: Neil Postman warned us that we might amuse ourselves to death. And that was back in 1985!

Also, you don’t need to be an Ayn Rand ideo­lo­gist to sug­gest that private com­pan­ies strive for profits. No one forces Peter McKinnon and oth­er video cre­at­ors to play by YouTube’s rules.

But as PR pro­fes­sion­als, we must adapt and play by these new rules. We have no oth­er choice. Digital is way too prom­in­ent to be ignored:

Tech giants have asked their audi­ences to per­mit them to run large-scale Pavlovian exper­i­ments on us. And they have giv­en it to them.

It’s no coin­cid­ence that terms of ser­vices are lengthy and hard-to-read dis­claim­er doc­u­ments designed for scrolling past while their main con­tent is dopam­ine-indu­cing click baits.

Love it, hate it. If you’re a PR pro­fes­sion­al, it doesn’t mat­ter.
If the play­book is chan­ging, so must we.

Those Who Crush the Algorithm

Content that attracts instant­an­eous momentum and makes a big splash through­out each iter­at­ive test­ing series will out­per­form oth­er con­tent types. 

As for YouTube, this is per­haps most clearly demon­strated by the record-break­ing MrBeast:

The fact that MrBeast has mil­lions of fol­low­ers on YouTube is not fun­da­ment­al for his con­tinu­ous suc­cess — his extra­vag­ant, over-the-top videos would go vir­al regard­less of which account pos­ted them. ²I’ve stud­ied sev­er­al in-depth inter­views with MrBeast, and it’s clear that he’s a bril­liant con­tent cre­at­or that has been pub­lish­ing videos on YouTube for a long time before his pub­lic … Continue read­ing

Here’s the point: Algorithmic dis­tri­bu­tion doesn’t mean con­tent cre­at­ors can’t reach a vast audi­ence. Innovative cre­at­ors, like MrBeast, will find ways to nego­ti­ate the algorithms and go vir­al repeatedly.

While we can appre­ci­ate MrBeast’s videos as wel­come dis­trac­tions, as pure dopam­ine-infused enter­tain­ment for the masses, we might be miss­ing out on con­tent cre­ated by indi­vidu­als and organ­isa­tions that could’ve reached their already-earned sub­scribers, fans, and followers.

Today, social media need user-gen­er­ated con­tent more than ever. But they don’t need mediocre cor­por­ate con­tent. They’d much rather have our budgets. 

For PR, this is rough but not unfair.

Why PR Professionals Must Adapt

Many organ­isa­tions have spent ser­i­ous resources attract­ing sub­scribers, fans, and fol­low­ers on social media. But the value of hav­ing sub­scribers, fans, and fol­low­ers is quickly eroding.

As PR pro­fes­sion­als, we must be rational.

We should com­pare the cur­rent situ­ation with our long-stand­ing rela­tion­ship with tra­di­tion­al news media. Traditional news media is power­ful but imper­fect, so PR pro­fes­sion­als must man­age the media. The same goes for social media.

It’s not our place as pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­nic­at­ors to tell journ­al­ists how to do their jobs, just as it isn’t our place to tell tech giants or con­tent cre­at­ors how to do their business.

Our job as PR pro­fes­sion­als is to help organ­isa­tions nav­ig­ate the com­plex­ity of the mod­ern media land­scape. Algorithms are a nat­ur­al part of that complexity.

The Silent Switch has pro­found and severe implic­a­tions for our soci­ety. But our job as PR pro­fes­sion­als isn’t to fix any of these prob­lems but to help organ­isa­tions com­mu­nic­ate effi­ciently in times of change.

Our job is identi­fy­ing sig­ni­fic­ant changes where the Silent Switch is fun­da­ment­al and find­ing ways to improve organ­isa­tion­al com­mu­nic­a­tion.

PR Resource: The 7 Graphs of Algorithms