I will call out the ABC here for taking a lot of the boots on the ground work that Tom Tanuki - independent journo (https://youtube.com/@tomtanuki) has done with these far right slopaganda mills, slicing off the prior recognition and pretending it's a big new problem they just found.
While a bit of this is new... Is it that new? Is this report that detailed? Hmmmmm
Facebook is still big in my country, Lithuania, and both rage-bait and other type of fringe content is rampant, and even worse after fact-checking was removed. It is wild, and with some outside actors (specific country that shall not be named) it is a big problem with political and social effects being felt IRL.
And is Lithuania doing anything about it? In Romania Facebook and TikTok do whatever they please, and whatever they are paid to do, with complete impunity as the authorities actively do nothing at all.
This isn't anything new, it was abundantly clear after Facebook removed their fact checking team during covid that the priority was engagement over everything else, and rage bait is exactly that.
I just want to add, that they (FB and other big social media) probably understood what propaganda power they wield after 2016 facebook and cambridge analytica scandal.
Personally - I think that this was the moment when silicon valley billionaires without shadow of a doubt understood that they have power what used to be reserved only for state actors. Bonus - for using that power they get fined penny on the dollar at most or just slap on the wrist.
Update: now situation is even worse - states actively buy propaganda with social media companies, making those companies even more rich and influential.
This is a really funny way to describe Facebook's (and Youtube's, and TikTok's, and...) entire business model. It's long been known that they aggressively promote, ahem, "engaging" content. How do they incentivize people to make it? Ad revenue!
How is this any different than traditional media? Cable news creates fake problems and controversy constantly, and pay their news anchors well to do so.
In return, many companies that rely on these problems, turn around and advertise on these networks.
What are you trying to say? That Facebook should be excused because others also behave badly?
Otherwise, we can dislike both things and it adds nothing to say "but why aren't your talking about the other thing instead". And for what it's worth, there is a pretty clear difference between the journalistic standards of FB bait and of the legacy media.
One big difference is regulation and algorithms. All viewers/readers see the same content in traditional media, and they’re all subject to scrutiny by government regulators (however effective or not they may be).
Social media networks display different things to different people so it’s borderline impossible to know exactly what they’re even showing. That makes regulation extremely difficult.
Social media has been protected by the Safe Harbour rules because they had millions of users creating content which was difficult to monitor and moderate.
If they start producing their own content they might get considered like a news organisation with a whole different set of rules being applied to them and Safe Harbour being inapplicable.
With social media you can spend small amounts of money , create media and target people half across the globe from you.
ruzzian troll farm employee cannot call into fox news and say “create 100 John Does impersonating MAGA texans (or whatever), present them as real and I will pay you 5$ for that”. Such troll can automate all this and present media somewhat realistically on FB.
>> How is this any different than traditional media?
Facebook is global. Traditional media is much more heavily regulated in some countries and while it may not be perfect, it's not comparable to the shit show that is social media.
If you use the friends or "all" feeds, you just get stuff about what your friends are up to and things from pages you've subscribed to. Or I do anyway. Also good for discovering events locally.
Even the main feed isn't that bad for me. I guess it depends who your friends are and what you click on.
I use FB for genealogy, because there are a lot of local groups where people post historical pictures, and older people in general are more active on Facebook.
I've seen some local groups taken over by ragebait slop, though. Ironically, not even right wing rage bait slop. As far as I can tell, it finally boiled over for the admin of the page, who was a fairly liberal guy in an extremely rural place, when a local museum found out he was anti-Trump and stopped collaborating with him on local history (maybe for fear of other's reactions). Since then he's strictly reposted rage material from other places/people on Facebook, much of it clearly low effort/AI generated.
I can't judge him, he lives there after all, and from this side of the ocean my political sympathies are definitively closer to him than to his enemies. Still :/
FB and IG reels both.
Twitter gets a lot of rightfully owed criticism about it's fair share but its always weird to me seeing people slam twitter then go right on to IG or some other meta owned app as if its significantly different.
I'm so glad I got myself off Instagram and Reddit, the longer I go without them the more I realise what massive cognitohazards both of them are if you spend too much time on them. Different mechanisms but both were much more of a net drain on me than I realised before leaving them.
I use both IG and Twitter. IG reels for me are largely funny videos, stuff I follow, and stuff I'm interested in. On Twitter I only follow tech stuff and yet about 20% of the stuff in my 'recommended' feed is racist, violent, and stuff I have zero interest in. Even if you hit the 'non interested' button they continue to shove it down your throat.
Is it ethical wrong in this case, to wish those persons to get beaten up one day, by one of the people where they fueled their hate (who do take it out on other people for real)? So they reap what they sow?
Wishing for something doesn't make it happen. So we should consider the effect that this wishing has on you: does wishing for vengeance make you a worse, or better, person? I'd try to avoid it, myself.
If you're in a position where you're actually making the decision between letting these harmful practices continue, or putting a stop to them, that's different. But in this society, such people are more likely to be journalists and justices than vigilantes, so violence is still inappropriate. I think the scenario you described, of those incited to violence turning on the inciters with violence, is rather unlikely in reality, and it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.
Maybe they should pay their programmers to fix the audio bug in their iOS app. I can't listen to my podcasts and use the facebook app at the same time because it wants to mute the podcast to play nothing, even with the phone on silent and autoplay disabled the facebook app just randomly mutes my podcasts for no reason making me not want to use the app.
Social media platforms have been paying out for attention seeking behaviour for a long time now. It’s why every YouTube video now has the same lame shocked face, red arrows, and clickbait title. It’s why assholes film themselves intentionally pissing people off for TikTok. It’s a whole category called nuisance tubing.
I remember during COVID I saw a number of YouTubers swing from producing normal content into conspiracy shit. Their views ballooned. I saw a nasty feedback loop where the more controversial content received more engagement, hence more ad revenue, leading to more of it being produced.
These platforms are actively degenerating society; there’s a reason the CCP is keeping tight control and reportedly rebalancing things to promote educational creators on China’s.
CCP is keeping tight control over social media platforms first and foremost to prevent spreading information which could topple CCP.
"Last month 60 popular celebrity gossip sites were closed overnight for corrupting "core socialist values," and a new regulation released in May requires all online news portals to be managed by Communist Party-sanctioned editorial staff."
No, they actually do have a paternalistic drive to keep things healthy and pro-social above and beyond some Bond villain stuff.
I mean, yes, you also can't get away with organizing an opposition, but they really do care about social cohesion and good family values above and beyond that.
(Also, one should always note that the BBC is state owned when they write articles full of invective like this).
Indeed. What I noticed is that the quality of the videos went down on youtube in the last 3 years. Now, the quality was never as great as it used to be anyway, but Google changed various things that made youtube worse. They are slowly killing off youtube without realising it.
A lot of channels got bought by private equity. YouTube is saturated with similar content so creators have to resort to clickbait to keep up. AI has allowed creators to increase their efficiency writing scripts.
I don't know what you believe Google changed about YouTube, but I believe it has just made itself worse.
The distinction disappears when Facebook incentivizes the creation of the rage-bait content by prioritizing it in their algorithm. They can, at any moment, de-rank rage-bait, but they don't. That clearly signals "make rage-bait for our platform and we'll pay you."
Contrast it with something like Elsagate. Google actioned the offending creators and attempted to deprioritize the kind of content that caused the controversy. Facebook would do the same if they didn't condone rage-bait.
First of all, Facebook is not even the worst offender. That'd have to go to X and TikTok. Rage bait, propaganda, and straight up bad actors with money pushing their agenda. If you got angry because of a TikTok video, you are being exploited.
Some of these actors also put a lot of money into campuses in the west, so when you're done watching some terrible propaganda, you can join a local club and find your way to more people getting angry at misinformation. This is how we get stuff like "globalize intifada" and students "occupying" buildings.
I wish this was just hyperbole, but really, go check for yourself what kind of money state actors put into schools and universities in the west, and why.
People want to feel like they're doing something in the "culture war". Rage-bait gives them an outlet. Facebook might be saving us from total civil war here.
When will people learn that rage bait content thrives thanks to people who are so delicate and emotional that they get unhealthily enraged at such content?
Stop raging on the internet and the rage bait content will disappear overnight.
Stop buying oil, chasing newest phones, luxuries, and the climate will get better overnight.
It’s all on the consumers, contrary to Redditor belief that the big corporations are at fault, it’s simply the matter of demand and thus supply. Not the other way around.
Take accountability. I know nowadays it is very unpopular to take accountability but this is the first step to make world better place. You can only change your own habits.
Out of interest, would you have made this argument with respect to Big Tobacco back in the day? In my view surveillance-based behavioural recommendation engines belong very much in the same category.
Well, you use their platform and thus line their pockets. Why? Because it’s convenient, it’s lazy and “free” and you sold your soul and data for far too cheap.
If the population cannot behave in their best interest then the whole western civ gets Darwin Award and I am fine with that honestly.
And it is actually happening in real time in almost all categories from fertility rate to losing psychological warfare.
You can say a lot of words on any given topic on a niche technology board but what does that change?
What can you do to change this situation? If there is a want then there are opportunities to make a difference.
Look, I don’t expect everyone to go into politics or become some kind of chief activist but I would love for people to be more aware of their collective strength and power.
To dispel the too pervasive illusion of powerlessness and false narrative (I wonder where that came from btw) about lack of agency.
Today’s divisions (I wonder where that came from) make it harder to group up with people when everyone is so split and radical and polarised (I wonder where that came from)
Look, I may make a lot of quite fervent comments on this site a lot of the times but it is just because I see 24/7 how we are getting tricked into less and less personal freedoms.
Now people understand why Suckerberg is called Suckerberg.
Those greedy billionaires also keep on having ties to right wing nuts. Let's not forget Melon Usk with his suspicious right-arm-raising gestures (having done so twice, which is quite strange when you do the same gesture twice in a row - I mean there can be no doubt about this if you do it twice; twice is an accident?).
Just to fund, transmit, amplify, protect, and profit from it.
Personally - I think that this was the moment when silicon valley billionaires without shadow of a doubt understood that they have power what used to be reserved only for state actors. Bonus - for using that power they get fined penny on the dollar at most or just slap on the wrist.
Update: now situation is even worse - states actively buy propaganda with social media companies, making those companies even more rich and influential.
In return, many companies that rely on these problems, turn around and advertise on these networks.
Social media is just following the same strategy.
Otherwise, we can dislike both things and it adds nothing to say "but why aren't your talking about the other thing instead". And for what it's worth, there is a pretty clear difference between the journalistic standards of FB bait and of the legacy media.
Social media networks display different things to different people so it’s borderline impossible to know exactly what they’re even showing. That makes regulation extremely difficult.
If they start producing their own content they might get considered like a news organisation with a whole different set of rules being applied to them and Safe Harbour being inapplicable.
ruzzian troll farm employee cannot call into fox news and say “create 100 John Does impersonating MAGA texans (or whatever), present them as real and I will pay you 5$ for that”. Such troll can automate all this and present media somewhat realistically on FB.
Scale, lower entry bar, lack of regulation.
Facebook is global. Traditional media is much more heavily regulated in some countries and while it may not be perfect, it's not comparable to the shit show that is social media.
Even the main feed isn't that bad for me. I guess it depends who your friends are and what you click on.
I think it has done more damage to this country than tobacco.
I've seen some local groups taken over by ragebait slop, though. Ironically, not even right wing rage bait slop. As far as I can tell, it finally boiled over for the admin of the page, who was a fairly liberal guy in an extremely rural place, when a local museum found out he was anti-Trump and stopped collaborating with him on local history (maybe for fear of other's reactions). Since then he's strictly reposted rage material from other places/people on Facebook, much of it clearly low effort/AI generated.
I can't judge him, he lives there after all, and from this side of the ocean my political sympathies are definitively closer to him than to his enemies. Still :/
Voting seems to work, either with actual votes, or wallet, or attention.
If you're in a position where you're actually making the decision between letting these harmful practices continue, or putting a stop to them, that's different. But in this society, such people are more likely to be journalists and justices than vigilantes, so violence is still inappropriate. I think the scenario you described, of those incited to violence turning on the inciters with violence, is rather unlikely in reality, and it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.
I remember during COVID I saw a number of YouTubers swing from producing normal content into conspiracy shit. Their views ballooned. I saw a nasty feedback loop where the more controversial content received more engagement, hence more ad revenue, leading to more of it being produced.
These platforms are actively degenerating society; there’s a reason the CCP is keeping tight control and reportedly rebalancing things to promote educational creators on China’s.
"Last month 60 popular celebrity gossip sites were closed overnight for corrupting "core socialist values," and a new regulation released in May requires all online news portals to be managed by Communist Party-sanctioned editorial staff."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40896235
I mean, yes, you also can't get away with organizing an opposition, but they really do care about social cohesion and good family values above and beyond that.
(Also, one should always note that the BBC is state owned when they write articles full of invective like this).
I don't know what you believe Google changed about YouTube, but I believe it has just made itself worse.
If you provide both:
a) a service to earn money from content
b) an algo promoting those videos
then yes, IMHO they pay them directly for the content produced.
- Meta is commissioning or sponsoring rage-bait
- Controversial creators are earning money through Facebook's content monetization program
The title is ambiguous (at first, I thought it was the first case), and that's where the clickbait lies.
No doubt that also the second case is a serious problem, but that's orthogonal to the ambiguity of the title.
Contrast it with something like Elsagate. Google actioned the offending creators and attempted to deprioritize the kind of content that caused the controversy. Facebook would do the same if they didn't condone rage-bait.
Some of these actors also put a lot of money into campuses in the west, so when you're done watching some terrible propaganda, you can join a local club and find your way to more people getting angry at misinformation. This is how we get stuff like "globalize intifada" and students "occupying" buildings.
I wish this was just hyperbole, but really, go check for yourself what kind of money state actors put into schools and universities in the west, and why.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_pet-eating_hoax
Stop raging on the internet and the rage bait content will disappear overnight.
Stop buying oil, chasing newest phones, luxuries, and the climate will get better overnight.
It’s all on the consumers, contrary to Redditor belief that the big corporations are at fault, it’s simply the matter of demand and thus supply. Not the other way around.
Take accountability. I know nowadays it is very unpopular to take accountability but this is the first step to make world better place. You can only change your own habits.
Rather like smoking, I can only change my own habits (have never smoked) but that won't prevent me from being harmed by other people's habits.
Even if I don't use Facebook, I can be harmed by Facebook voters.
It was what people voted for and endorsed, one way or another. Grassroots activists and various bottom top endeavours.
If you expect somebody else to solve your problems then nothing will ever happen.
Instead they have removed those tools and are paying these creators. So it's not just consumers to blame here.
If the population cannot behave in their best interest then the whole western civ gets Darwin Award and I am fine with that honestly.
And it is actually happening in real time in almost all categories from fertility rate to losing psychological warfare.
The population is a wide demographic and it would be nice if companies didn't try to exploit parts of it.
What can you do to change this situation? If there is a want then there are opportunities to make a difference.
Look, I don’t expect everyone to go into politics or become some kind of chief activist but I would love for people to be more aware of their collective strength and power.
To dispel the too pervasive illusion of powerlessness and false narrative (I wonder where that came from btw) about lack of agency.
Today’s divisions (I wonder where that came from) make it harder to group up with people when everyone is so split and radical and polarised (I wonder where that came from)
It’s not a fun thing to observe
And why would the responsibility lie solely on consumers to act perfectly
Those greedy billionaires also keep on having ties to right wing nuts. Let's not forget Melon Usk with his suspicious right-arm-raising gestures (having done so twice, which is quite strange when you do the same gesture twice in a row - I mean there can be no doubt about this if you do it twice; twice is an accident?).