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Facebook is more than a factor. It is central to the problem as the largest social media corporation. Its amplification of psychopathic content to maximize the
by buitreVirtual 5y ago
Facebook is more than a factor. It is central to the problem as the largest social media corporation. Its amplification of psychopathic content to maximize the sickest forms of engagement for profit has people effectively living in a destructive cult. Remember when first came the tea party with their death panels talk, then birtherism, then Trump, QAnon and coup attempts?
- _moof 5y agoTo put my position more simply: fixing (or ending) Facebook is necessary, but it won't be sufficient.
- avalys 5y agoThe tea party and birtherism predate all of Facebook’s content ranking algorithms - so I would say you’ve proved the GP’s point.
- buitreVirtual 5y agoAll that garbage was circulating and being amplified in early Facebook and for many years later, even today, generating engagement and profit regardless of algorithms. They just made it worse over time. Why do you also dismiss the rest of the list?
- eropple 5y agoThey do not, however, predate opportunistic actors begging for shares of their content on the platform, and of the platform's users happily doing so. I know; my dad was one of them. There's a difference of kind to mass broadcast on a platform one incidentally scrolls (and thus receives incidental exposure from) versus, say, chain emails. The latter have a lot lower impact and require way more activation energy to push onward than a one-click Share.