5 years ago, Facebook launched users to emotional buttons to work together with posts like “favorite”, “haha”, “wow”, “unhappy” and “indignation”, along with the usual “like” button.
According to the Washington Post, Facebook has created an algorithm that decides what content each individual will see within the News Feed. The content rating system depends on emojis to push provocative, angry posts to the highest of the feed.
From 2017, internal documents revealed that Facebook’s rating algorithm rated a “wrath” button like 5 times as valuable as alike because posts that incite anger usually tend to appeal to readers, and growing engagement is vital to business Facebook’s.
At one point, CEO Mark Zuckerberg even encouraged users to drop their anger each time they did not like a post. Though this can trigger comparable varieties of posts to appear on their feed more.
Some Facebook workers rapidly realized the intense flaw behind the rating algorithm. Facebook’s endorsement of controversial posts causes spam, abuse, and clickbait to run rampant on the platform.
By 2019, the company’s data scientists confirmed that outraged posts had been typically low quality, containing malicious, deceptive information. That’s, in the past 3 years, Facebook has improved one of many worst issues on the platform.
Particulars of the inner debate concerning the “outraged” emoji on Facebook were offered to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the US Congress by former worker Frances Haugen’s authorized counsel, after which to the US Congress. Washington Post.
“Anger and hate is the simplest option to get attention on Facebook,” Haugen told Parliament earlier this week.
The ranking algorithm leaves content moderators and the Facebook Integrity team powerless in the battle against malicious content. Members of the Integrity group typically warn concerning the dangerous results of this system however are ignored by the leadership.
Exploiting anger is only one of many levers Facebook engineers use to shape the flow of information and discussions on social networks largest of the world. This leverage is proven to influence many issues, from users’ emotions to political campaigns, to even inciting atrocities.