Remember the polls on television that allowed anyone to call a number and cast a vote on political, national and other topics? Where did they go?
You can scale a lot of things – usually it requires bigger budgets and/or change in technology. You can buy audiences and make your content reach almost everyone in the world who is connected to internet.
What you can’t scale is conversation.
It came to me looking at Facebook post published by news outlet – the Facebook post contained facts that contradict the post on publishers webpage. Some users had pointed this out, but no-one apparently follows those comments so it’s only a matter of time and critical thinking on users’ part when they’ll understand that being one of hundreds of commenters on a Facebook post published by page with millions of likes is like running with your head in the wall. The same thing happened to those polls – television viewers started to get the point that their call is lost and actually doesn’t matter.
The same goes for twitter replies to accounts with millions of followers and other engagement forms on other platforms.
Users will get to the understanding that nobody hears them – and then the engagement will go as well. In this case – if tree in forest falls and there’s no one to hear it, it doesn’t make any sound.
Hope I made my point clear.