Wole Talabi says the system is looking for enragement, not engagement
Now, if making you angry will do that, perfectly fine. That works for them too. If making you fall in love with something will do that, they’ll do that too. It’s completely irrelevant how you respond. What matters is that you respond and you respond frequently and to a high degree. The more extreme the reaction, the better. I remember reading a book that described it not as looking for engagement but actually looking for enragement. The more they enrage you, the better it is, because enragement is guaranteed to produce a response. Angry comments. You want to troll other people. You want to get back at them, so you follow what they’re writing and you comment on everything. The current structure of social media algorithms is designed to be divisive.
It can help connect people to each other. Tools in general are neutral. Right? I strongly believe that technological tools are neutral, but the application that we put towards them, the objective function that we set for any tool will dictate how it’s used. And if the objective of social media algorithms is to generate ad revenue by getting people’s attention or engagement, then this is the natural endpoint and no one should be surprised that it is divisive, producing extreme reactions, making people angry, stressed out, unhappy, because those are all things that get you reacting.
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