Emotionally charged content spreads better, so platforms optimize for outrage

Evidence

The left blamed Trump’s victory on social media platforms’ failure to police bad actors, with growing suspicion that these platforms benefited financially from causing chaos. Academic Ian Bogost reflected, “Social-media operators discovered that the more emotionally charged the content, the better it spread across its users’ networks. Polarizing, offensive, or just plain fraudulent information was optimized for distribution.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 487

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interests in how algorithmic curation shapes public discourse — parallels communication-theory readings on technology shaping culture. — connects to: Contagious media spreads fastest when stripped of all inessential content — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 949; Outrage fuels the very media systems and politics it claims to oppose. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1692; Angry online responses to moral offenses drive content to go viral — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 456 (+1 more)