Americans have become significantly more likely to identify as liberal in their views on social issues over the past 25 years. Liberal views on economic issues, too, have increased, but still lean conservative.
Social media has been steadily increasing social issue polarization for over a decade, with a substantial increase in use since covid quarantine. The algorithms are designed to maintain engagement for as long as possible by providing the user with media similar to the media they spend the most time viewing or commenting on.
Just look at what’s happened to Facebook Boomers. It’s curated confirmation bias, that will only worsen with use.
providing the user with media similar to the media they spend the most time viewing or commenting on.
And also that increased engagement is directly correlated with anger. Social media companies have a financial incentive to drive partisanship- when a user gets angry, they are more likely to post stuff, which in turn causes the algorithm to show them more stuff that makes them angry, which makes them more likely to post stuff, etc. And all the while the company is collecting all that ad revenue. Behind the Bastards did an episode on Facebook and they said that at one point in time, Facebook’s recommendation algorithm was weighting posts that users marked as “angry” five times heavier than posts marked as “happy”.
So if you’ve ever wondered why an anonymous YouTube account gets recommended right-wing shit-heads like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, or Charlie Kirk so quickly, it’s because of that. Not only do they intentionally try to inflame the right with made-up stories about the left (“They’re coming to make your guns get gay married to illegal immigrants!”) the left gets angry at just how blatantly, stupidly wrong those stories are. Thus, engagement.
I also think the internet is the primary driver for this, but I’m sure it’s a vastly complex set of circumstances on top of that. I don’t know how we fix this… Increased polarization is always going to tend to negative outcomes. Even if you “win” that first inevitable conflict, there will be another one. I think even my political enemies have a vested interest in fixing this, although their answer would likely just be “restrict the internet once in power”.
Social media has been steadily increasing social issue polarization for over a decade, with a substantial increase in use since covid quarantine. The algorithms are designed to maintain engagement for as long as possible by providing the user with media similar to the media they spend the most time viewing or commenting on.
Just look at what’s happened to Facebook Boomers. It’s curated confirmation bias, that will only worsen with use.
And also that increased engagement is directly correlated with anger. Social media companies have a financial incentive to drive partisanship- when a user gets angry, they are more likely to post stuff, which in turn causes the algorithm to show them more stuff that makes them angry, which makes them more likely to post stuff, etc. And all the while the company is collecting all that ad revenue. Behind the Bastards did an episode on Facebook and they said that at one point in time, Facebook’s recommendation algorithm was weighting posts that users marked as “angry” five times heavier than posts marked as “happy”.
So if you’ve ever wondered why an anonymous YouTube account gets recommended right-wing shit-heads like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, or Charlie Kirk so quickly, it’s because of that. Not only do they intentionally try to inflame the right with made-up stories about the left (“They’re coming to make your guns get gay married to illegal immigrants!”) the left gets angry at just how blatantly, stupidly wrong those stories are. Thus, engagement.
I also think the internet is the primary driver for this, but I’m sure it’s a vastly complex set of circumstances on top of that. I don’t know how we fix this… Increased polarization is always going to tend to negative outcomes. Even if you “win” that first inevitable conflict, there will be another one. I think even my political enemies have a vested interest in fixing this, although their answer would likely just be “restrict the internet once in power”.