Social platforms have fundamentally shifted their operating logic. What once functioned as value distribution mechanisms now operate primarily as extraction engines for user attention and data. The irony? Most casual users don't mind—they're comfortable with the tradeoff. Meanwhile, platform operators bank serious revenue from this arrangement. It's a textbook example of misaligned incentives. When value creation becomes secondary to value extraction, both users and platforms rationalize it as progress. This dynamic is precisely why decentralized alternatives gaining traction—they're reimagining who captures value in the digital economy.