Why Facebook won’t change and what you can do about it
Yet again, the world is shocked. Last week, Frances Haugen revealed, backed by documents, how Facebook’s algorithms are tuned to increase revenue at all costs.
This mainly means prioritising more extreme content to more users as they elicit a response from others, which means engagement, which means impressions, which means more ad space, which means more profit.
There was a similar outrage last year when Tristan Harris’ documentary Social Dilemma was released on Netflix. That film could finally visualise what an algorithm does, making the black box more easy to understand and digest by millions.
And now, it’s been proven that these impression-based algorithms, which try to maximise revenue, also teach users certain behaviours online.
A Yale University study from Aug 2021 found that social media platforms like Twitter amplify expressions of moral outrage over time because users learn such language gets rewarded with an increased number of “likes” and “shares.”
This won’t be the last scandal.
Because as long as these platforms monetise via ads, impressions will remain their main focus. So, posts with the most engagement will continue to be rewarded by these algorithms.
Until platforms value user content for their insight, wisdom and creativity regardless of the author’s number of followers, the current problem will not go away.
This time, I hope we move past our collective amnesia and look for ways to communicate in healthier spaces, meant for dialogue.
Choices exist. We just need to embrace them.
