Years ago I suggested that FB was designed to create a “culture of perpetual outrage”. People who are emotionally engaged are more susceptible to advertising messages – plus, they are likely to stay connected to FB for more minutes. Internal documents reveal that FB not only knew this but gave emotional content posts higher leverage in The Algorithm that decides what you see online.
A simple research study demonstrated how FB’s algorithm readily amplify extremist political viewpoints on the left and right. The root cause is that FB optimizes for time spent engaged with FB – and does not optimize for what you may wish to see. The result is FB optimizes to keep you perpetually outraged.
The news media has labeled any discussion opposing generic cloth facial coverings as motivated by conservatives. In this case, they mislabeled an Open Schools group of mostly progressive Democrats (this is San Francisco where almost no other perspective exists) as “conservative” – because they oppose continuing to force cloth facial coverings on school kids who are fully vaccinated.
The algorithms lead to an increase in angry people and divisiveness, leading to a world of angry people, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Media says we must not refer to the initial variant of Covid as the “Chinese” variant, but almost immediately refers to the “UK variant”, the “Brazilian variant”, the “South African variant”, and now the “India variant”. The lack of consistency in their cultural of outrage is remarkable.