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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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I agree, mostly, young people start with tiktok (or whatever the platform du jour is) and the algo pushes Andrew Tate at them. Xitter is now a cesspit of hate. There are FB Groups and Insta accounts monetising 'news' and YT accounts pushing hate as 'news'.
Simplistic populism is easy to digest and easy to understand. No matter how ludicrous it is, the idea that the root of your problems is muslims/the dems/women/trans folks/the gays/whatever is simple, easy to understand and easy to communicate. Its made for algorithm driven content.
I don't want to be that old cunt at the back of the room harping on about the good old days but we live in an age when truth is irrelevant and easy to understand but utterly wrong information gets spread far and wide. Facts are usually complex, nuanced and not easy to present in a soundbite type way and nobody listens to explanations that last more than 5mins.
People of my generation invented this info hellscape and are profiting from it. The young are the ones paying the price.
On the algo front, outrage drives engagement by multiples compared to any other emotion, Facebook literally did the research. So comments and posts that cause outrage get more likes, more retweets, more comments, they've literally gamified outrage generation.The big social media companies have way way too much power.
It's not all the algo though as all it does is cater to what the masses 'want'. Look at Lemmy. No algorithm, yet it is just as partisan or worse than any other social media platform out there. It's just curated by people instead of code.
Before FB or Twitter, all forms of internet communication (forums, BBS, newsgroups, 4chan, etc...) were just as bad. The news just didn't pile on to the steady stream of BS at that time. IMO capitalism is killing unbiased media and letting blatantly biased media flourish (ie: FOX) because that is what the masses want.
It is what the masses engage with, not necessarily what they want. FB have literally done studies into the negative impact this has on people and it's well within the power of these companies to normalise this kind of post. They choose not to because it drives engagement. If they were unaware - that's a different thing, but it's not the case.