This separation is inaccurate, because the surveillance capitalism imperatives of big tech requires them to be both.

Social media needs ragebait influencers to attract people in the first place to harvest their data, and simultaneously requires projecting an image of being uncontroversial for advertisers. This dichotomy can be seen with Tiktok, which is infamous for pushing people further down polarising echo chambers, yet is unironically one of the fastest growing e commerce sites.

Simply being or or the other is a failing strategy. Purely uncontroversial platforms are too boring. Purely controversial platforms are too toxic. We can see the shittification of Reddit in its pursuit of becoming financially viable as an IRL example of this.

Any differences between the big tech platforms are at best surface level. Meta is genius in how they managed to give the illusion of Facebook and Instagram being separate, despite them explicitly sharing data as part of a vertically integrated surveillance capitalist enterprise.

Read Shoshana Zuboff