Zuckerberg Horizon

The point on a social media platform where more than half of the content presented to users is either paid messaging inserted by the platform owner or artificially-generated ("bot") content, masqueraded as human-generated content.

The Zuckerberg Horizon is typically identified as a watershed moment, where an established social media platform loses both its value to users as a community discussion forum, and its and general credibility as a source of impartial information. Beyond this horizon, human-to-human communication represents the minority of content presented to everyday users of the platform.

Social media platforms crossing the Zuckerberg Horizon typically fall into a state of rapid public decline, though several documented exceptions exist. Examples of platforms surviving the horizon include those catering to extremist or "anti-fact" communities (e.g. The Flat Earth Society), platforms primarily funded by corporate interests (e.g. climate-denial forums), or those dedicated to distributing state-sponsored propaganda.

Twitter passed the Zuckerberg Horizon when Elon Musk re-activated thousands of previously-banned extremist accounts and disabled the accounts for legitimate news outlets critical of the decision such as The New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post.

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