The Era of Rot: How Meta’s Decay Reflects Big Tech’s New Reality
The Era of Rot: How Meta’s Decay Reflects Big Tech’s New Reality
When a platform’s primary goal is “engagement at any cost,” the cost is often user trus, and Meta is setting the bar lower than ever.
Meta is doubling down on engagement-driven algorithms and shedding any pretense of responsibility, dismantling fact-checking and diversity initiatives while loosening community standards.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent rhetoric on “masculine energy” and “aggressive culture” highlights the company’s pivot toward unfiltered, controversy-driven growth. This isn’t a sudden shift; Meta’s platforms have long amplified sensational content, disproportionately favoring conservative media.
Meta is not simply allowing toxicity but actively engineering platforms that thrive on misinformation and polarization. Meanwhile, the broader tech industry seems poised to follow, with companies prioritizing profit over user experience.
As Meta injects AI-generated content into feeds, the decline in platform quality accelerates, and hopefully, with that we can see Meta platforms disappear in the long run. It would be best for society.
Read the full article on Where's Your Ed At.
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Dr. Mark van Rijmenam
Dr. Mark van Rijmenam is The Digital Speaker, a world-leading futurist and global AI keynote speaker who helps leaders decide what AI, and the technologies that follow it, mean for their business. He speaks to leadership teams at their retreats and to conference audiences worldwide, and his WAVE framework gives them a way of deciding that they keep using long after he has left the room. His Intelligence Age Scorecard measures how ready an organization is across the four WAVE pillars.
He holds a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney, is a Certified Speaking Professional and Global Speaking Fellow, and ranks among the world’s top futurists on the Global Gurus list (#1 in 2025, #3 in 2026). Salesforce named him one of its 16 leading AI voices. He has written six books, most recently Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, writes the Synthetic Minds newsletter on Substack, and founded Futurwise. Talk to his digital twin on WhatsApp: +1 (830) 463-6967.
