A story about Twitter and artificially amplified outrage
Original Tweet: note the 160K likes
Original Tweet: note the 160K likes
When I click on it, here are the first two replies I see: note that neither has very many likes, and the second doesn't even have many replies, though both have high ratios.
The third and fourth responses I see. Both are positive responses, both have way more likes than the first two. One is directly responding to the types of replies of the first two
Fifth and sixth. Again, massive amount of likes, one directly positive, the other responding to the haters.
Somehow, despite a small amount of negative responses, and very few people liking those responses, the most negative and controversial comments are shown to me *first*. The most liked replies are not even directly about the actual video, but are responding to the negative ones
It's not hard to imagine the algorithms that make this happen. If we all engage most when we feel outrage, we train engagement maximizers to show us outrageous stuff, whether or not it's representative or important.
I like the idea of twitter a lot, and I feel like it can be a great place when used properly. But I think that this sort of psychological manipulation is very damaging. We as consumers can't ever coordinate well enough fight it.
