Because emotionally roused viewers are more susceptible to advertising messages:
The service’s algorithm, designed to reward content that elicits emotion, made it a perfect tool for Russian propagandists to spread disinformation during the 2016 election.
Source: Instagram Looks Like Facebook’s Best Hope – Bloomberg
Nice to see others recognizing that Facebook emotionally manipulates people.
Not sure “ethics” and “Facebook” can cohabitate in the same sentence:
The ethical use of the psychology behind social media, particularly Facebook.
Facebook has a staff of psychologists, who as we can now see, help develop methods of controlling Facebook users, leading to ethical questions by other psychologists.
Source: Ethics, Psychology, Facebook & Cambridge Analytica – Kara Lambert
From the 2016 memo: “Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools … And still we connect people.”
Andrew Bosworth now says he didn’t mean what he said, you know, it was just fake news. And Facebook staff are experts at fake news! Hah hah!
Facebook admits their system is designed to dupe people and treat Facebook users like, in Zuckerberg’s own words, “Dumb Fucks“.
We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote.
….
“So we connect more people,” he wrote in another section of the memo. “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.
“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”
Now we understand the Facebook team’s Likes, Comments, Posts, and can evaluate their interests, behavior and their mental health.
Facebook is a global criminal enterprise. Facebook is not your friend.
As this blog has noted, much of social media has devolved into a culture of perpetual outrage by angry people often consumed with hate. This sort of social media is not fun to be around. Advertisers are noticing this too:
“Unilever will not invest in platforms or environments that do not protect our children or which create division in society, and promote anger or hate,” Unilever Chief Marketing Officer Keith Weed is expected to say Monday during the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting in Palm Desert, Calif.
“We will prioritize investing only in responsible platforms that are committed to creating a positive impact in society,” he will say, according to prepared remarks.
Source: Unilever Threatens to Reduce Ad Spending on Tech Platforms That Don’t Combat Divisive Content – WSJ
This linked piece was shared into my FB news feed. The item argues that President Trump suffers a fragile ego and is constantly looking for affirmation from others.
The column says people seek to increase their “tribal self esteem” by strengthening their group membership, by, for example, spreading online propaganda messaging in support of their cause – and denigrating those who think otherwise (for any reason).
The column quotes from Nathaniel Branden:
“It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.”
This is the form of much online social media propaganda, whether you call it “I’m right and your wrong” or “My group is smarter than your group”.
It comes down to fragile egos seeking positive feedback from their own group.
Much online social media propaganda reinforces group membership – it certainly does not cause the target to change their perspective. But “sharing” such propaganda virtue signals one’s self importance within the group garnering group support that satisfies the social media propaganda participant’s ego.
Life Time fitness, a chain of gyms in the U.S. and Canada has removed all cable news channels from the televisions displayed throughout their facility, as customers complained that the constant barrage of news was not healthy.
Source: Life Time fitness chain blacks out all-news TV channels – StarTribune.com
That we need to be constantly entertained while doing something like exercise illustrates how ingrained media consumption (and manipulation!) has become.
But it is interesting to see that many others are fed up with the constant barrage of 24 x 7 “news” (I put that in quotes since most of it is now entertainment, not traditional news reporting).
Me – I go running. I do not even listen to music while running. Clearly, I am weird!
Staying informed is a strength, but for many people it’s mushroomed into an obsession with the news.
Personally, I found that certain subjects were “triggering” anxiety in me and I have cut way back on news and social media consumption. I also unfollowed or unfriended individuals who spent most of their social media time baiting people with hostile political rants. These steps led to improved sleep and better mental health.
Through my fascination with propaganda and the creation of this web site, I learned how media is manipulative. I learned how it uses emotional hooks as bait for our attention, and how these hooks inflame our emotional state. I learned that ranting on social media is not healthy for those doing the ranting nor for their drive by victims.
I learned that a large quantity of news is speculation, often intended to inflame our emotions (and the speculation generally proves unfounded when we look back at old news stories). I also learned that much news is pointless, exaggerated, lacking in context or surprisingly wrong. We pretend we are being informed when in reality news is mostly a distraction and a form of entertainment.
We’ve gone to a 24 x 7 cable TV driven news cycle – where almost all of it is repetitive drivel and speculation of no importance to any of us. We will doubtfully remember most stories in a day, let a lone in a week.
I ran across a link to an old CNN Money financial news report from October 24, 2016. Every speculation made in this news report was wrong and illustrates how much “news” is not really reporting on events but is speculation about the future.
One week before the 2016 Presidential election, CNN Money’s report is titled
Key points:
All of the key points were speculation and were wrong.
Do watch the CNN video at the link and do watch the reporter’s body language. (The reporter no longer works for CNN. She now works for the Washington Post.)
Impact on Social Media and Propaganda
These news reports are entertainment stories designed to occupy your time while pretending to inform you.
These stories become the basis for social media conversations as they are Shared, Liked and Commented on via Twitter and Facebook.
These stories whip some into emotional outrage. In reality these stories waste our time – we are not better off for having watched or read a story that ended up being 100% wrong. In fact, we may be worse off.
Speculative Stories Are Easily Spun into High Emotional Impact Stories
Large numbers of news reports are pure speculation about the future; none are ever a scorecard of whether past speculation proved true or false. Speculative stories are entertainment to fill a 24 x 7 news cycle, to keep our eyes glued for the delivery of advertising messages. Reporters can find an authority (“Appeal to authority”) to find any quote they want. Speculative stories are easily spun into high emotion grabbing content, which is perfect for Sharing – or merely to lull our brains into being more susceptible to advertisements.
Bottom line: Learn to recognize speculative news reports and do not take them seriously. Learn to think for yourself and question whether someone is spinning a story to persuade you of something. Avoid sharing speculation on social media – all that does is amplify that you’ve wasted your time and think your friends should waste their time too.
Disclaimer – The U.S. is so polarized that I am required to post a disclaimer: reminder, I did not vote for Trump and the above comments are not pro- or anti-Trump but are a comment about the use of speculation as an editorial technique to inflame our emotions and engage us into social media propaganda sharing.
Supporting Data
Highlighting the work of social psychologist Roy Baumeister, Seppälä points out that our brain’s “tendency to give more weight to the negative may have helped our species survive by highlighting potential dangers.”
“However, in this day and age, our negativity bias, both as it relates to the environment and to our self-judgments, is harmful,” she writes.
Source: Psychologist says this mindset makes you happier and successful
Attributes of social media – especially the angry, negative posts – may be overloading our brain’s ability to cope with the scary. We really are better off focusing on the positive rather than the negative.
