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Comment by animal_spirits | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I think this the crux of it. Facebook is prioritizing the most "engagement" which means prioritizing the most "reactions" which means prioritizing the most divisive and enraging content on both sides. If Facebook instead prioritized the "ah that's nice" kind of content we wouldn't see the divisiveness we see today

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I feel this ignores human nature to engage an in conflict. Or in other words, humans like to debate so we will.

It's also common for people to accept defaults without substantial customization. That's why the algorithms matter. Some people will deliberately seek out rage-bait even if the default algorithm delivers just-the-facts news and heartwarming pictures from friends' families. Most won't. Also, most people won't customize their settings to eliminate rage-bait if that's what gets prioritized by algorithmic defaults.

It also doesn't matter how much you customize your settings if they're inherently useless, minimally functional, or never there in the first place. A lot of the content control settings that Facebook loves to tout are practically useless.

Sure, I can hide every post from the "Controversial News" page, but I can't stop viewing content from third parties entirely. I'm only interested in first-party content - what my contacts create. Unfortunately that goes against the monetization model of Facebook.

I want a more closed loop social network and think that's the model we should return to, but unfortunately that's not where the profit/engagement is.

Yeah but it is also human nature to fuck as much as possible but we have rules and laws against things like rape to control those tendencies. Just because we are naturally inclined to do something does not necessarily mean that it is best for us

What? This is certainly [citation needed]

I highly disagree that it's human nature to 'fuck as much as possible'.

Certainly it is the goal of some humans. I can speak with personal experience that my nature isn't just to 'fuck as much as possible'. And neither is it most ppl I know. And the thing that's stopping us is not just anti-rape laws?

Fucking is great, but if you have a family and young kids, you care a lot about taking care of you family and not just going to the club and fucking more people.

Yeah you're right, not my best take. But I guess the point I wanted to get across is that we shouldn't let our natural desires dictate what is legal or not, time and time throughout history.

It's more interesting to debate subject and preferences where there is not already an overwhelming amount of evidence that one side is wrong.

It's about surprise... content that is surprising has more information content (from the perspective of the surprised person), which drives engagement. The problem is that when you don't make a distinction between true surprising content, and false surprising content, it's a heck of a lot easier to generate false surprising content.

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