Joe raises a valid point, and it makes me wonder - do people love to hate?
Maybe not intentionally, but is it natural to find what we dislike and build against it?
Everyone will eventually not like something; a food, a song, a work of art, whatever it is that doesn't work for them, they tend to disagree with. When it is an ideology that pushes against core values, like authoritarianism, antifascists, like myself, find our tolerance for what we consider atrocious behavior plummets. At the same time, those embracing a fascist regime will build upon their hatred for anyone who pushes back and calls them out because they cannot understand freedom. I mean, they really DO NOT understand what freedom is and means, so they follow the leader, whoever they have chosen as their savior and will hate whoever is against that regime.
I don’t think algorithms favor anything in particular; they’re different for every person and show a different feed to each person based on what that person looks at most consistently or which posts they look at the longest. It IS about attention and what takes someone’s time, because that’s what helps keep them in business. If algorithms start to appear like they’re favoring anything in particular it’s because we give it our attention rather than just scrolling past. We see more in our feeds of what we look at the most and what we we look at the longest. I think it’s as simple as that.
In my experience, anger engages. Rage. As you say fear. And anyone in those states is very easy to manipulate. They’re susceptible to having their emotions played, the buttons pushed, and led down a particular route.
But also prejudice played a large part. Because prejudice comes directly from fear, and hate.
How do you show someone that
the person they fear and hate is no threat? That would require a disengagement from their own emotions. It would require reason, logic, critical thought processes
I think it's important to distinguish between Zuck and Musk here.
Everything you're saying here about how algorithms prioritize attention/engagement is bang on. Chris Hayes' new book The Siren's Call goes into depth on the subject and it's fascinating. You've correctly diagnosed Facebook's approach to algorithmic manipulation.
Musk, on the other hand... there's a number of cases where he's been caught directly intervening in Twitter's algo and Grok to reflect his desires. That's a much more direct manipulation, and it should be treated as its own distinct thing that we've never really seen at this level on the Internet before.
Outrage is sticky. The algorithms are tuned to favor content that creates outrage. We aren’t the customer, we are the product. Our data is mined and sold to anyone willing to buy it who use that data to micro-target us with toxic messaging. Our media is also tuned to favor content that creates outrage. We are being purposefully distracted, divided, and deluded. People are so addicted to the illusion of connection these platforms provide that they cannot see how they are being manipulated. It is an existential threat to the future. Keep banging this drum!
Appreciate this take on how the algorithm amplifies fear and tribalism.
I’ve been exploring the same theme musically—what happens when the machine starts reflecting our chaos back as entertainment.
Just released a track called “The Punchline (Broadcast II)” that treats the algorithm like a comedy club: the feed laughs half a beat late, and humanity learns to laugh first.
👉 Listen on SoundCloud (This is not for attention)
I think the algorithm is possibly a psychologist’s greatest empirical tool in that the algorithm can lead you through several layers of exploratory realms of the human psyche.
Presuming the underlying media is heavily tagged with meta-data, a photo for instance might repeatedly serve branches of a data tree examining what is selected on these topical branches. I know this sounds vague, but imaging a photo of a bowl of ice cream, with 57 tags on branches of a data tree containing flavors. A user selects a flavor, then on that node of the algorithmic tree are sub-nodes that further drive you down, like cherry pie, cherries jubilee, cherry gumdrops, cherry lollipops.
Now, imagine this algorithm testing your fears, anger, and sexual desires. You have a dangerous profiling platform based on assumptions that I am benign to the structure and choosing my preferences, and not simply testing the algorithm. I don’t know whether I am making any sense.
There's a video out now on X and Youtube about Zohran Mamdani that reflects the "Fear, anger, tribalism, also sex" perfectly. Everything you could ever fear about communism, islam, brown and black people, even sex in that AOC is portrayed as a sexy vampire. It would be funny to normal people except how many normal people are there these days?
You don't need to beat Trump, you can wait him out. This is just a moment, the republic has weathered much worse. There is no threat to our democracy except our voters. All the democrats need to win is to bring good candidates.
Or... we find a way to deliver our positive, loving, wisdom and agendas in a way that's just as interesting and efficient as the fascists are. Come on, as artists and writers and filmmakers, we know that we can't just preach at our audience, no matter how worthy the content of those sermons are. We have to hook our audience the same way that Trump and Bannon and other fascists do. What... they're smarter than us? More artistic than us? Better writers or performers than us? We know that's not true. We just have to see what works and use those techniques for GOOD, not evil, and hook the motherfucking audience right BACK to OUR side of the street, the side that has sunshine instead of shadows.
"The day that Americans realize the five wealthiest people in our country own media companies, is the day they realize said media companies’ entire business model is built on keeping we regular citizens hating each other. As long as we’re fighting culture wars, we aren’t fighting a class war with them as their profits skyrocket while federal minimum wage is still $7.25/hour."
A broad class-based coalition is the only real threat to the ruling class, and everyone knows it. Bernie 2015 was the closest we’ve come — simple economic populism that cut across race, religion, and culture. And notice who killed it: the DNC, not the GOP. They smeared him as “bad on race,” “sexist,” and invented the “Bernie Bro” moral panic to fracture the coalition into identity micro-groups.The GOP runs the same playbook from the opposite direction — crank up white identity, nativism, and grievance so working-class whites never unite with working-class everyone else.Social media finishes the job by rewarding the loudest, most divisive influencers. Polarization isn’t an accident; it’s the incentive structure that keeps a class-based majority from ever forming.
Outrage drives engagement so the algorithm rewards outrage. Social media companies know this has dire real world consequences but they don’t care because it’s made them very rich.
Joe raises a valid point, and it makes me wonder - do people love to hate?
Maybe not intentionally, but is it natural to find what we dislike and build against it?
Everyone will eventually not like something; a food, a song, a work of art, whatever it is that doesn't work for them, they tend to disagree with. When it is an ideology that pushes against core values, like authoritarianism, antifascists, like myself, find our tolerance for what we consider atrocious behavior plummets. At the same time, those embracing a fascist regime will build upon their hatred for anyone who pushes back and calls them out because they cannot understand freedom. I mean, they really DO NOT understand what freedom is and means, so they follow the leader, whoever they have chosen as their savior and will hate whoever is against that regime.
Such a dichotomy.
The algo has to go.
I don’t think algorithms favor anything in particular; they’re different for every person and show a different feed to each person based on what that person looks at most consistently or which posts they look at the longest. It IS about attention and what takes someone’s time, because that’s what helps keep them in business. If algorithms start to appear like they’re favoring anything in particular it’s because we give it our attention rather than just scrolling past. We see more in our feeds of what we look at the most and what we we look at the longest. I think it’s as simple as that.
I don’t entirely agree. musk, for example has altered the algorithm on X...
Well, I don’t know anything about that. I’m not on X.
In my experience, anger engages. Rage. As you say fear. And anyone in those states is very easy to manipulate. They’re susceptible to having their emotions played, the buttons pushed, and led down a particular route.
But also prejudice played a large part. Because prejudice comes directly from fear, and hate.
How do you show someone that
the person they fear and hate is no threat? That would require a disengagement from their own emotions. It would require reason, logic, critical thought processes
I think it's important to distinguish between Zuck and Musk here.
Everything you're saying here about how algorithms prioritize attention/engagement is bang on. Chris Hayes' new book The Siren's Call goes into depth on the subject and it's fascinating. You've correctly diagnosed Facebook's approach to algorithmic manipulation.
Musk, on the other hand... there's a number of cases where he's been caught directly intervening in Twitter's algo and Grok to reflect his desires. That's a much more direct manipulation, and it should be treated as its own distinct thing that we've never really seen at this level on the Internet before.
It's amusing when he can't control Grok no matter what he tries though. I love seeing the ppl busting it down and getting Grok to call musk out.
But it's also scary that one day he (or whoever is actually doing the coding bc I doubt it's him) might actually get it to work how he wants.
Outrage is sticky. The algorithms are tuned to favor content that creates outrage. We aren’t the customer, we are the product. Our data is mined and sold to anyone willing to buy it who use that data to micro-target us with toxic messaging. Our media is also tuned to favor content that creates outrage. We are being purposefully distracted, divided, and deluded. People are so addicted to the illusion of connection these platforms provide that they cannot see how they are being manipulated. It is an existential threat to the future. Keep banging this drum!
I can't say anything or Elon Musk will come after me. He tried to recruit me...
Appreciate this take on how the algorithm amplifies fear and tribalism.
I’ve been exploring the same theme musically—what happens when the machine starts reflecting our chaos back as entertainment.
Just released a track called “The Punchline (Broadcast II)” that treats the algorithm like a comedy club: the feed laughs half a beat late, and humanity learns to laugh first.
👉 Listen on SoundCloud (This is not for attention)
www.soundcloud.com/Em_45/tracks
(/432 steady)
Different medium, same question—how do we stay human when the code starts writing punchlines?
Yes. I agree.
I think the algorithm is possibly a psychologist’s greatest empirical tool in that the algorithm can lead you through several layers of exploratory realms of the human psyche.
Presuming the underlying media is heavily tagged with meta-data, a photo for instance might repeatedly serve branches of a data tree examining what is selected on these topical branches. I know this sounds vague, but imaging a photo of a bowl of ice cream, with 57 tags on branches of a data tree containing flavors. A user selects a flavor, then on that node of the algorithmic tree are sub-nodes that further drive you down, like cherry pie, cherries jubilee, cherry gumdrops, cherry lollipops.
Now, imagine this algorithm testing your fears, anger, and sexual desires. You have a dangerous profiling platform based on assumptions that I am benign to the structure and choosing my preferences, and not simply testing the algorithm. I don’t know whether I am making any sense.
It is hard to describe data structures.
There's a video out now on X and Youtube about Zohran Mamdani that reflects the "Fear, anger, tribalism, also sex" perfectly. Everything you could ever fear about communism, islam, brown and black people, even sex in that AOC is portrayed as a sexy vampire. It would be funny to normal people except how many normal people are there these days?
You don't need to beat Trump, you can wait him out. This is just a moment, the republic has weathered much worse. There is no threat to our democracy except our voters. All the democrats need to win is to bring good candidates.
Thats why I don’t use chat AI.
Or... we find a way to deliver our positive, loving, wisdom and agendas in a way that's just as interesting and efficient as the fascists are. Come on, as artists and writers and filmmakers, we know that we can't just preach at our audience, no matter how worthy the content of those sermons are. We have to hook our audience the same way that Trump and Bannon and other fascists do. What... they're smarter than us? More artistic than us? Better writers or performers than us? We know that's not true. We just have to see what works and use those techniques for GOOD, not evil, and hook the motherfucking audience right BACK to OUR side of the street, the side that has sunshine instead of shadows.
"The day that Americans realize the five wealthiest people in our country own media companies, is the day they realize said media companies’ entire business model is built on keeping we regular citizens hating each other. As long as we’re fighting culture wars, we aren’t fighting a class war with them as their profits skyrocket while federal minimum wage is still $7.25/hour."
A broad class-based coalition is the only real threat to the ruling class, and everyone knows it. Bernie 2015 was the closest we’ve come — simple economic populism that cut across race, religion, and culture. And notice who killed it: the DNC, not the GOP. They smeared him as “bad on race,” “sexist,” and invented the “Bernie Bro” moral panic to fracture the coalition into identity micro-groups.The GOP runs the same playbook from the opposite direction — crank up white identity, nativism, and grievance so working-class whites never unite with working-class everyone else.Social media finishes the job by rewarding the loudest, most divisive influencers. Polarization isn’t an accident; it’s the incentive structure that keeps a class-based majority from ever forming.
Outrage drives engagement so the algorithm rewards outrage. Social media companies know this has dire real world consequences but they don’t care because it’s made them very rich.
Interesting