not really. it was a natural progression. with any online movement it always goes undergound > cool > profitable > user blocked > forced. we’re at the forced stage of social media. What I mean by this is at one point we found social media and even LLMs cool. companies decided they needed to capitalize on this cool new tech and make a buck out of so they in turn hammered ads and tracking into everything. the user eventually gets wise and blocks all of this while still consuming the product. So said companies now demand that world governments prevent people from out right blocking them so they can continue marketing to them and selling their data for a profit. They then mask this as “protecting the children”. All you have to do is look at whose financially backing these movements. Surprise, Surprise one of the top backers/lobbyists is Meta.

It moved quickly because it needed to move quickly otherwise the potential for lost profit was massive. LLMs are getting on board with this too because they’re not making any money and their best bet is to “age restrict” their bots so they an sell the users data. and user data from an LLM is INSANELY more valuable than say Facebook user data. Users are more likely to tell a bot things that they wouldn’t admit on social media…and there’s money to be made off that.