25
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
25 points (100.0% liked)
Chat
7455 readers
13 users here now
Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Indeed I do. Reddit is specifically crafted to drive continuous engagement. Beehaw, Lemmy, Tildes, etc. are not. My understanding is that the engagement is driven through emotional manipulation. That just doesn't seem to be here and I think it makes people not be so mean.
It's improved my outlook on the world and on people.
Do you perhaps have a source on this? (I'm really interested, not a sarcastic question)
I thought that Reddit's only major problem was the fake internet point thing, before the venture capital craziness started that is.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/13/1122786134/does-social-media-leave-you-feeling-angry-that-might-be-intentional
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024292118
https://www.frac.tl/work/marketing-research/emotional-content-drive-engagement-social-media/
A how to: https://spintadigital.com//blog/the-psychology-of-social-media-how-to-use-emotional-triggers-to-drive-engagement
The long and the short of it is engagement of any kind drives dollars. This is always been the case. The more emotionally invested a person is the more engaged they will be and I don't remember exactly where the research was that I saw but anger drives the most engagement. I believe cuteness was rated as second best but again this is a foggy memory. This is why cats are popular on the internet, puppies are popular on the internet, there's an r/aww etc.
If you don't have emotional engagement, you literally don't care so why would you post, why would you read and why would you reply?
More specifically not just anger but outrage drives the most engagement because you fight against what you are outraged by: https://www.techdetoxbox.com/weapons-of-digital-manipulation/how-attention-economy-profits-from-outrage/
So if you're pro-life and you see pro-choice winning out and that disrupts your view of the world that would cause you outrage right?
If you're pro-choice and you see how roe versus Wade just got overturned that would cause you outrage right?
In both cases, you want to learn more, you want to read about it, you want to fight against the thing that is threatening your identity, or your beliefs, or generally even just your view of the world.
There's also a larger conversation to be had about how this type of conflict is used to distract us from more important conversations like inflation, global warming, and more generally class struggle. All of those, generally being driven by profit motives.
The most disappointing thing for me is that's probably just a perverse incentive. They probably don't even actually care whether people are angry or happy or sad just that the ad revenue just keeps pouring in.
It kind of makes me wonder what it would take to make improving the world become highly profitable. Hmm.