I don’t think social media is inherently evil, but profit motive creeps into people’s private lives and fundamentally corrupts the natural premise of social connection.

Social media is huge money, all through advertising. Advertising will use anything it can to manipulate an audience’s behavior, that’s what it exists for in terms of research and how organizations decide what ads to run and where: net engagement and sales figures. Whether to sell you a product or a political idea, it is most effective when you don’t realize you’re being advertised to. This encourages ad firms and political campaigns to manipulate user psychology to get the most meaningful results they can. I think the depth of insight all the data collection tech companies do opens a window to manipulate people in ways we haven’t really come to terms with as a society.

And while the fediverse is probably more resistant to advertising than a centrally controlled system, there is nothing stopping well crafted astroturfing in this space. Political astroturfing in particular doesn’t generally look like what someone expects an ad to look like because of its ubiquitous nature and its natural network effects.

Not trying to say there is no organic discussion, but I would be shocked if they were ignoring this avenue for getting the word out. It’s basically free advertising and advertising is generally expensive.

I mean the idea is to appear organic, it’s not very effective advertising otherwise. It’s free real estate there is no reason they would not be doing it.

Makes sense they advertise here enough