Because companies don’t want money. They don’t want a lot of money. They want ALL the money. If another company has a feature that people like and use, then this company wants that money as well. So they either buy that other company or copy and push the feature in the hopes of converting users.

This is why YouTube has these asinine shorts shoved into your layout. They know YT users don’t want them. This is why you can’t disable them. They know that another company makes money with shorts and they want it - so YOU are gonna use them goddammit.

A third party YouTube app doesn’t have to show these shorts so YT wouldn’t be able to pressure their users into consuming that format.

LinkedIn is the most stupid thing because it is a fucking job board that wants to play to be Facebook and is the most unnecesary thing in the world. Before the Instagram Stories clone they were already too far by adding like 20 other social network features that a page like LinkedIn doesn’t need.

That’s precisely what they don’t want. The modern fight isn’t directly for your money, but for your time.

If you’re binge watching Netflix… You’re not playing a Nintendo game. If you’re playing a Nintendo game… You’re not listening to Spotify. Or going to the movie theater. And so on.

For social media platforms it’s the same. People like short videos now? Well, if Facebook doesn’t add them to their app you’ll close it and go browse TikTok. In the next board meeting, executives are going to ask the team why the hell are they not working on adding short videos.

It’s a vicious battle for your time, and then figuring out later how to monetize that attention. Usually ads.

This kind of feature creep was also common in the web2.0 days. Lots of forum plugins were basically “you can have a facebook profile and feed page and a twitter feed, but they’re all wish.com equivalents because they’re locally hosted and can only be seen by the other people on this forum”. These features were generally quite popular too, heck I installed a few on my own forum. Besides money and things, I think it’s enticing to want to make your site into a “one stop” site. Throw in the fact that these are all capitalist hegemons trying to become the next ring to rule them all, and I think you’ve got your answer.

A platform’s development is entirely in the hands of its userbase. If the users stay on the platform longer due to a change, they’ll make that change and keep it. It just so happens that humans like what humans like, so all social media tries to cater to the same things that humans like, which leads them to implementing the same features because it drives engagement. It’s a trend towards mediocrity.