The first time a social media executive admitted that he was trying to get people to fight with each other to raise “engagement” (and thus profit), he should have been relentlessly hunted like a plague-spreading rat. This was our mistake.
I'm still having a fear response over the time FB admitted they literally put bad & depressing news in your TL to see if being angry and sad would make you stay on the site longer
I am fascinated by Threads’ attempt to *not* do this (given the financial incentives and how I presume they do it with FB); they very clearly silo people with different political beliefs in such a way that you have to go out of your way to find someone to fight (which I do not).
that sounds like Andrew Bosworth, who was Zuck's Artificial Intelligence TA he's Zuck's Evil Jiminy Cricket He said publicly that he put out "The Ugly" memo to be provocative but he said privately he agreed that engagement growth was self-justifying and his distancing from it was only optics
omg I didn't know they've actually *admitted* it. that's even more depressing
I loved Zuckerberg's "People should make up their own mind about the Holocaust" refusal to moderate content.
“Engagement farming” - 🤮
