I don't like social media platforms. There are plenty of reasons; they exploit user data, violate user (and non-user) privacy, enable genocide, enable trolls, addict users, lower user well-being, and more (1, 2, 3). Still, I love the promise of social media. It's supposed to seamlessly connect you to the people and information you care about. In reality, the existing platforms fail to live up to this promise while actually managing to harm their users. There isn't an obvious solution to this problem as the social media business model naturally incentivizes them to neglect user interests in order to make more money. When the leaders of these platforms are asked about the problems above, they respond with fluffy statements about "protecting user privacy", "ensuring user trust", and "connecting users". These are token responses. The truth is that these platforms care about users only because those users can view ads. Let's look at why.