Comment by paulgb
5 years ago
> What is needed is to change the way communication is occurring away from viral algorithms promoting the most viral content (outragebait), which only certain companies and people can do.
Exactly. Articles like this are fine and all, but they're generally preaching to the choir; the audience they really need to reach is indifferent to the arguments, and like it or not, calling for someone to be cancelled is also an exercise of their free speech rights.
Social networks don't want to change anything, because culture wars drive engagement (even if they slowly make the platforms uninhabitable).
I don't know what's to be done except to move away from social networks into smaller communities (Slack groups, etc.) that have their own norms of discourse.
> Social networks don't want to change anything, because culture wars drive engagement
Is there any public evidence that outrage-driven engagement is profitable? It's a statement that is frequently repeated, but I haven't seen any evidence for it.
Admittedly, there's no smoking gun here, just inferential evidence from the fact that they don't tweak their algorithms to curb it. Which, admittedly, could be that they don't have the resources to do it -- but in either case, my point is that the solution probably will not come from the social networks on their own accord.