> "How does a brand show up in somebody's DMs or Discord server if they're not invited?" Haberman said. But in many ways, that's the point. People can still go on Instagram to check on their favorite celebrities and influencers, but young people don't want brands and marketers infiltrating the closed communities where they spend most of their time.

All people don’t want brands in their closed communities!

Anecdotally I strongly agree with the article. I pretty much only use Discord and group texts anymore among friends and family (though I do self host and share on Mastodon/Pixelfed/Lemmy it’s a fraction). Any time I poke around on traditional social media it just feels like a wasteland, 90% ads/curated content. Fine if you want to go read a magazine for a bit I guess but a shell of what it was like a decade ago.