Content that makes people angry and get into bile-filled back-and-forth screaming matches with each other is fucking amazing for engagement, so Facebook et al push it to the top of peoples' feeds in order to get them to keep clicking, and to keep serving them ads.
Maybe Facebook hasn't really changed since it began, and "maximising engagement" has always been their main priority. But it's probably a pretty safe bet that they've put a lot of effort into that, and got much, much better at it in the last 15 years.
From the article:
> In July, Nick Clegg, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K. who is now a top flack at Facebook, published a piece on AdAge.com and on the company’s official blog titled “Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate,” in which he wrote, “There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it.”
I would disagree. I submit that hate drives engagement, engagement drives eyeballs on adverts, and eyeballs on adverts drives $$$$, which absolutely benefits Facebook, and gives them an incentive to keep hate on the platform.
I'm a pretty nice guy. But if you made a supercut of 1% of what I say in a day, you could tell any story you like. It would be my words, but its your narrative.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...
Its entire premise is Facebook has created an enormous amount of carveouts and tolerances for hate speech and divisive content to protect revenue and growth.
What it has become (and rapidly since going public) is an attention-seeking addiction portal trying to gain every dollar it can from clicks. Full of ads, showing you only the friend status updates it wants to show you from its blackbox algorithm, inferring what your interests are based on whatever you click on, adding on tons and tons of functionality to keep you in the bubble (events, marketplace and so on)
It is very different to what it began as.
Facebook however makes the reach of these propaganda articles larger by order of the magnitude, it makes it utterly cheap to reach a vast amount of audience with any kind of message.
It exposes the rotten core of society, where demagogues and liars can be hugely successful and where truth isn't really all that important. And then amplifies this until things start breaking.
So anyone who puts blame solely on Facebook is wrong. But Facebook also isn't the naive neutral entity here just like a person using a fan to spread fires isn't.