More and more I think that might be the point. In the absence of users having control over the content they see, the only users left will be the ones who are naive, not tech savvy, and who have very high tolerances for manipulation: people who don’t leave because either they don’t know how, can’t understand or remember a possible better alternative, or can’t muster the effort.

These are incidentally also the same people who are most likely to be unable to distinguish ads from content, most likely to click on ads, and most likely to engage with click- and rage- bait content. That is: people most vulnerable to corporate predation.

It’s just like scam robocalls. It’s bad by design, because half the point is to immediately weed out anybody smart enough not to fall for it.