Comment by DyslexicAtheist 4 days ago
>> people who kept posting as if nothing changed typically were extremely low-value posters
absolutely not, ... these were (and are) always there. instead it was Facebook management decisions choosing to amplify exactly this. Let's not blame a minority of (misguided) content creators for the shortcomings of Zuck and his sycophant senior managers.
> The only blame on Facebook's end is a failure to moderate and mitigate it.
Facebook actively amplified ragebait content, for the engagement it drove. That is utterly their fault.
They actively amplified any content that got high engagement, not ragebait specifically. That's why you see this trend across nearly all social media, not just Facebook. There's a strong financial incentive to get people to engage with your service, and amplifying the content that is already getting the most engagement is a simple way to do that.
You could blame this on advertising, but I think even if Facebook were a paid service (ignoring for a minute that that would have killed any chance it had of being successful in the first place) there'd still be an incentive to prioritize content that people's revealed preferences indicate they want to see more of.
Countering this natural human tendency requires a significant, thoughtful, concerted effort on the part of everyone involved.
Sadly true. I saw the same thing happen in real-time as Imgur transitioned from being image hosting for Reddit to an independent network.
It went from people posting silly memes and cute dogs to angry political stuff dominating the front page every day.
I think you under estimate how much of the angry political stuff is driven by paid for content by people with an agenda - and companies like Meta have just taken the money.
Sure in the end it sweeps up indviduals but money and professional narrative shapers are often behind these things.
There are a cadre of highly competance professionals in the advertising/PR area that were massively enabled by the tools that Meta et al provided ( for money ) - suddenly you could run campaigns that were highly effective, relatively cheap, and almost invisible.
This has been ruthlessly exploited by people and organisations with more money that morals.
Goverments have in part been asleep at the wheel, but also too keen to use such tools for their own ends.
In Imgurs case it's all left leaning. Lots of scaremongering about what project 2025 and how close we are to dictatorship and lots of alarmist ragebait.
I saw a post just over a week ago from a user who predicted that Trump would declare martial law on April 20th because that was the day such and such report would advise him to do so.
It made the front page with hundreds of upvotes and comments agreeing. it's an extreme example but the site is full of this kind of stuff, most often bringing your attention to some obscure ruling or decision, some new political depth plumbed that will mean x,y, and z will now happen.
The aspect of real people posting worthwhile stuff stopped regardless of Zuck's decision to amplify engagement bait. IMO, it was because many of them had their life stage progress beyond college and had better things to do than post to social media.
As anti-Zuck as I am, I argue this is simply human nature. I've seen the same effect all across internet interactions, from Gamefaqs to 4 chan to Tumblr to Tiktok. controversial content will simply draw in more discussion (i.e. flamewars) than any other kind of contnet. sad content, happy content, funny content; it all falls to rage bait.
The only blame on Facebook's end is a failure to moderate and mitigate it. But at that point you ask if that would have simply pointed the controversy to the moderators (something also commonly seen).