Facebook execs are not responsible for what people think, but they aren't neutral either.
The connection between incentives ends generating a situation where their decisions had a huge influence on society:
- Their goal is to make the company profitable, and they choose ads as the business model.
- Without viewers, there are no advertisers. So, engagement is key.
- They need to create incentives to make people both content creators and followers: share your thoughts, share your photos, and show us what you like.
- Content creation is hard and strong opinions attract people (both detractors and followers).
- A long post format doesn't work for casual engagement, and the UI is optimized for a quick scan (because that helps with engagement).
The result is short posts of shitty content with very strong opinions that create an echo chamber. Can they get out of that trap? I don't know. I've seen good quality content in smaller online communities. (for example, while HN is not small, the quality of the comments is usually better than the article itself). But, I'm suspicious that optimizing for profit contradicts content quality. Something similar happens with TV shows. TV networks increased the number of reality shows: they are cheap to produce, generate strong emotions, and have a higher immediate audience than a high-quality TV series. The high-quality TV series came from media companies like HBO or Netflix because they don't care about optimizing minute-to-minute ratings (they care more about exclusives to attract subscribers).
The connection between incentives ends generating a situation where their decisions had a huge influence on society:
- Their goal is to make the company profitable, and they choose ads as the business model.
- Without viewers, there are no advertisers. So, engagement is key.
- They need to create incentives to make people both content creators and followers: share your thoughts, share your photos, and show us what you like.
- Content creation is hard and strong opinions attract people (both detractors and followers).
- A long post format doesn't work for casual engagement, and the UI is optimized for a quick scan (because that helps with engagement).
The result is short posts of shitty content with very strong opinions that create an echo chamber. Can they get out of that trap? I don't know. I've seen good quality content in smaller online communities. (for example, while HN is not small, the quality of the comments is usually better than the article itself). But, I'm suspicious that optimizing for profit contradicts content quality. Something similar happens with TV shows. TV networks increased the number of reality shows: they are cheap to produce, generate strong emotions, and have a higher immediate audience than a high-quality TV series. The high-quality TV series came from media companies like HBO or Netflix because they don't care about optimizing minute-to-minute ratings (they care more about exclusives to attract subscribers).