When users get into a heated flamewar, that's high-engagement. So you want to do everything you can to ensure that the most possible users get sucked into flamewars. I feel like this should be banned, but it's unclear what the best approach would be. Mandating chronological feed order?
I'd use the laws around tobacco as a framework.
Ban the opening of social media accounts for children under 13; restrict it for adolescents. Ban marketing for social media over a certain size (the caveat to preserve the threat of new entrants). Require warning labels; for minors, the warning should be attested to by a parent or guardian.
Require public disclosure of any sorting, filtering and moderation algorithms and policies. Require a public comment period for modifications to the foregoing. Require open access to researchers, where Facebook retains data control but let researchers query it (subject to oversight).
Let users tosue social media platforms for damage they intentionally or negligently cause. Create a fund social media companies must contribute a fraction of revenue to which subsidies mental-health services for people harmed by their social media use.
I'd add that a "no marketing/algo/data collection" option should be required that users would need to opt out of (although I would settle for opt in).
I have the phone numbers of my closest friends and family, why wouldn't I just call or text when I want to talk to them?
> Or at least it drives up engagement up until a person-specific breaking point.
Surely as this plays out, Facebook will see it's userbase fall out at some point...
I think flamewars are like that. You gotta leave a comment otherwise you feel your side loses out.
Not only can you get rich in that sort of time frame, you can retire and let your kids take over. The grandkids will be proper monsters who don't work at all, so they will probably cash out before the lawsuits get teeth.
Each of your friend's comments would still give FB a "chronological" reason to bump this post to the top of your feed, enticing you to get into the mix and increase the viral engagement of the original "bad stuff".
So there's no guarantee a structure that seems to encourage peace will actually work when scaled up.
I've noticed sites that tend to be for something other than "just chatting" tend to do better: many hobby specific forums, HN, hobbyist subreddits, etc. all seem to do better discourse-wise when focused on something specific, but I'm not quite sure why that'd be the case.
Furthermore, if someone is just there to be toxic, you have an easy justification to shut them down: "I'm sorry, but this is an underwater basketweaving Discord, please stop spamming #offtopic with why you think we should call in the National Guard to fight the war on Christmas." Many small communities have very strict regulation of political speech purely because it causes most of their problems.
Alt-tech is trying to collect all of the toxic bullshit in one place, so obviously they're going to be way more toxic despite their small size. It's also possible for niche communities to have their own toxicity problems, too. It's more that large communities are just inherently more difficult to govern.
There are similiar left leaning sites where the anita hangout that have similiar discourse but no one finds it toxic.
Combine those two groups and you have the most toxic place where everyone feels attacked, the need to attack and piling on a victim feels good. That could describe twitter or other public squares.
Once a social platform goes from "chatting with maybe a hundred friends/family max" to "basically everyone", it becomes the "comment section" for the entire region (or even the internet at large).
These are not your friends. These are not good people.
Teacher: Two kids are fighting sir.
Superintendent: And people are watching?
Teacher: Yes sir.
Superintendent: Great engagement! Lets put those kids next to each other so we can get more of this!