Daniel Harvey examines the tools of propagandists and says something at the end that I think might dovetail into the ongoing discussion here about the sorts of engagement social media platforms are coded to encourage if not enforce.
Everything we’ve talked about is signal boosted across social media. The fundamental business model of many of these platforms is advertising revenue. And that revenue is predicated on daily active users. Sadly outrage outperforms happiness by leaps and bounds — we click more when we’re angry. We no longer live in an attention economy but rather an outrage economy.
What I wonder, and I further wonder if in fact this has been studied, is whether and/or to what degree coding our social media platforms to direct people toward indication and excitation rather than interaction and expression simply is more conducive to outrage than attention. When it’s all about feeding engagement numbers as rapidly and often as possible, are we inherently feeding into our worst tendencies instead of fostering our best?