There is a fundamental difference between traditional media, such as news sites, newspapers, and magazines, and social media, meta, Twitter (X), and so on: Social media platforms do not produce content, but merely host content created by their users.

Although traditional media also earned only a relatively small portion of their profits from subscriptions (around 30-40% from people who paid for the content), the business model of social media is even more ad-driven.

Social media companies earn almost all of their revenue exclusively from ads and PR (public relations, i.e., influencing public opinion — what used to be called propaganda).

What I mean is that meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp...) or any other major social media company even gets paid to promote content provided by someone else.

In traditional media, this was called an advertorial – the only difference is that these hidden advertisements are now even more hidden because they no longer have to be labeled as such (this was required by law for traditional media, but is very easy to circumvent due to the way social media works).

Edit: in other words: if you have the funds, you could run whatever viewpoint you like on social media - but you have to deliver your own content or your own content creator aka influencer (maybe they provide even a copywriter or a face to go with it idk - but that's extra for sure).

You don't follow politics?

What I mean by this analogy is that democratic states face a massive problem because voters no longer receive decent information, as they mostly get their news from social media. But these sites do not operate according to the logic of traditional journalism (at least halfway researched stories based on a at least somewhat comprehensible standard concerning truth - quality journalists usually go for "both sides of the medallion").

Social media works completely differently: it's not about the value of the information, but just about clicks – and it doesn't matter whether stories that are sold as "news" actually have any truth to it at all. I mean, you may remember the presidential debate in which Drump was convinced that foreigners eat pets — which, of course, is not true, it's of course ridiculous, but that orange moron still has fallen victim to social media misinformation (newsflash: he is even US president now).

As a voter, you have no control over how or where your fellow citizens get their information. Unfortunately, they now get it primarily on social media, where not the truth matters but just how you sell your viewpoint - even if it is absolutely ridiculous. That's why someone like Drump gets away with all his lies – he has simply created his own reality in which what he says is, strangely enough, the truth for his followers.