'Link in Bio' is a Slow Knife

'Anil Dash:

We don't even notice it anymore -- "link in bio." It's a pithy phrase,
usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware that
a pertinent web link can be found on that user's profile. Its presence
is so subtle, and so pervasive, that we barely even noticed it was an
attempt to kill the web. Links on the web are incredibly powerful.
There are decades of theory behind the role of hyperlinks in hypertext
-- did you know in most early versions, links were originally designed
to be two-way? You'd be able to see every page on the web that links
to this one. But even in the very simple form that we've ended up with
on the World Wide Web for the last 30 years, links are incredibly
powerful, opening up valuable connections between unexpected things.

For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply
dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on
the web, how can Instagram -- meaning Facebook, Instagram's
increasingly-overbearing owner -- tightly control commerce on its
platform? If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might
even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their email
addresses or finding other ways to communicate with them. Links
represent a threat to closed systems. Here's the thing, though: people
like links. So closed systems have to present a pressure release
valve. Hashtags are a great way out. They use the semiotics of links
(early versions of hashtags on social platforms were really barely
more than automated links to a search for a particular term) but are
also constrained by the platforms they live on. A hashtag is easier to
gather into a database, to harvest, to monetize. It's much easier,
sure, but it also doesn't have all the messiness of a real link.
Instagram doesn't have to worry that clicking on its hashtags will
accidentally lead people to Twitter, or vice versa.'

-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/12/12/1540216

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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