Algorithm & Adverts

Adam Newbold on Mastodon:

if you encounter outrage on traditional social media (X, Facebook, etc.), it’s because it was amplified to boost engagement and drive revenue on that platform. If you encounter outage on Mastodon, it’s because you follow someone who happens to be upset, or you follow someone who’s sharing a post about someone else who’s upset.

Many people blame social media for a lot of the harm visible in the world now. IN fact Adams post is fulled by an email exchange on the subject. With good merit, too. There are whole books and thousands of research papers dedicated to the subject, all mostly coming to a similar conclusion. But there’s a problem with this outlook.

Social platforms, ones that allow people to communicate, share ideas and find common ground, can be a net benefit. Numerous studies support this (Bucci et al., 2019; Highton-Williamson et al., 2015; Naslund, Aschbrenner, et al., 2016b) So there must be something else at play here, and Adam hits this perfectly on the head. It isn’t just the social aspect, as we’ve been socialising for hundreds of thousands of years as a species. It’s the platform part causing the issues.

Often called the attention economy, platforms are maximising time on site and eyeballs on posts to show people adverts. It’s that simple. Nothing gets people to engage with others more than upsetting them and spiking emotions. Meta puts more disturbing content in your feed because it keeps you coming back for more.

Thankfully, not all social platforms are like this — but there are not many of them!