Facebook: 64% of the time users join extremist groups, the platform told them to

Re:Facebook: 64% of the time users join extremist groups, th... by j4yav on Friday January 08, 2021 @01:03AM (#25681985)

I think social media that prioritizes engagement just pushes people to whatever extreme they have a potential proclivity for.

Oh, you like x? How about you stay on our site and check out this whole series of content that people like you get really emotional about and can't stop clicking on.

It leads inexorably to extreme content.

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Re:Facebook: 64% of the time users join extremist groups, th... by asiando on Friday January 08, 2021 @03:45AM (#25682837)

Your last point rings true.

What’s the solution here? Prevent companies from using engagement as a metric? Do you want to be recommended random 13-views videos on YouTube? Because that’s what you get.

I don’t know if I’d like to lose good recommendation algorithms because of bad apples. However I don’t like bad apples either, they rot the whole batch.

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Re:Facebook: 64% of the time users join extremist groups, th... by j4yav on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:02PM (#25752649)

Sadly I don't know a good solution either, and I'm with you that it's not all bad. It's a complex problem for sure.

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