Tabloids, newspapers, news broadcasts are a single artifact delivered to many people. They have the same incentive to sensationalize, this is tempered though by the fact that they leave a public record that people can discuss, scrutinize, and will ultimately impact their reputation.
When a paper consistently prints outlandish stories of bat-boys and lizard-ufos, everyone can see that and the paper will get a reputation as being a rag.
In contrast, the feed of posts you see on your facebook (or twitter, or instagram, or other social media feed site) is tailored to you. There's no opportunity for other people to see the crazy thing that hit the front page and write blog posts critiquing it, give talks debunking the methodology, etc.
The algorithm can show your eyes, and your eyes alone, a steady stream of posts that are right on the edge of what you will find acceptable and engaging. The public at large won't know what is on your feed or even the feeds of powerful actors in society like politicians, billions, and celebrities.
It's like we are all accessing our own personal newspaper everyday, whose stories have been tailored to be as interesting as possible to us, but without any accountability or scrutiny besides what we bring to the table. You are welcome to see something that confirms your world view and either accept it as gospel or do the leg work to prove or disprove it.
What we are finding though is that when people are presented with things that confirm their beliefs, they tend to accept them. This isn't really earth-shattering or even surprising. The ramifications of having a population constantly consuming a stream of media tailored exactly for them is something are starting to understand.
Whenever the advertising industry get excited about a new medium or platform it should be a big red flag for the rest of us.
Really, I see Facebook as the A-bomb of virality and fomenting extremism. It is devastatingly effective. That's why they've made so much money. Much more than the NYTimes or National Enquirer or Drudge Report. It's not just another media source, it's a game changer at harnessing people's attention and outraging them as quickly as possible. At scale, with 1 billion users, this has world-changing effects.
The scale of reach is tremendous, faster and optimized in a way newspapers/media could only dream of.
It's also not publicly clear what is being widely disseminated and to whom, other than when outside parties analyze what's happening within Facebook on a given day (and this has limits).
Speed, scale, pervasiveness, profitability, automated algorithmic microtargeting based on individual psychological profiles.
>The more shocking it is, the more eyeballs it attracts and the more add revenue it gets.
It's the same concept, just taken to a never before seen technological extreme.
News broadcast is a better analogy but still not as addictive as something that continually reaches out to you throughout the day.
Even the most nihilist shock-jock has to pick a speed that won't alienate half his audience or drive all the advertisers away from the network. In these systems, those counterweights don't exist.
The more shocking it is, the more eyeballs it attracts and the more add revenue it gets.