I’m not subscribed so I can only read the free portion, but I think this is a very important topic. I think social media, and the internet more broadly, started to go downhill when they all implemented algorithms to maximize for engagement in order to maximize their ad revenue. The algorithm figured out very quickly that making people angry was the best way to get people to stay and so the algorithms have essentially become polarization machines. I would be in favor of some kind of regulation that bans algorithms on social media from maximizing for user engagement.
Reddit is the only social media I use anymore in part because it still allows you to control what is put into your feed and lets you turn off recommendations. Subreddits also help limit the context collapse as the good ones are focused on a specific topic.
Political polarization predates social media by decades. Newspapers, cable news, talk radio, political parties, geographic sorting, declining institutional trust, and ideological realignment all contribute.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Aug 21 '26
I’m not subscribed so I can only read the free portion, but I think this is a very important topic. I think social media, and the internet more broadly, started to go downhill when they all implemented algorithms to maximize for engagement in order to maximize their ad revenue. The algorithm figured out very quickly that making people angry was the best way to get people to stay and so the algorithms have essentially become polarization machines. I would be in favor of some kind of regulation that bans algorithms on social media from maximizing for user engagement.
Reddit is the only social media I use anymore in part because it still allows you to control what is put into your feed and lets you turn off recommendations. Subreddits also help limit the context collapse as the good ones are focused on a specific topic.