Every platform is extracting from their audience rather than serving them. What’s the optimal ad load we can hit someone with without them churning? Short-form video has proved to be a digital fentanyl that can keep us scrolling for hours. Stretched truths garner far more attention facts, so those are going to be amplified, because, again, more time on screen = more ad revenue. And the content creators themselves, in desperate bids to “keep up with the times,” are just as guilty, turning to more and more aggressive strategies for “hooking” a viewer so they too can make a living by monetizing this engagement with ads.