Platform incentives structurally favor anger over kindness toward outgroups

Evidence

Social media platforms could nudge their millions of users to be kinder towards the outgroup. This could be accomplished by slowing down people’s ability to reply in anger and highlighting less polarizing content with their news algorithms71, as well as changing the way likes and retweets work on Twitter149. However, these solutions would probably result in reduced engagement75, so there is little incentive for the platforms to implement such measures. Indeed, leaked documents from Facebook provide evidence that the social media company weights angry reactions five times as heavily as likes in deciding what content to display to users147. — Rachel Hartman et al., Interventions to Reduce Partisan…, 56

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s 2025 PNAS depolarization-is-hard benchmark and to the broader literature on attention-economy incentives. — connects to: Prejudice serves dual functions of lowering outgroup worth and boosting ingroup entitlement; Platform reward structures incentivize negative and divisive content over constructive content — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 459; Internet-economy payoff structures reward provocation because shame no longer constrains behavior — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 823 (+1 more)
• CANDY: Facebook weighing angry reactions five times as heavily as likes is a compact, tweetable ammunition fact.

Broader Connections

• Platform reward structures incentivize negative and divisive content over constructive content #expands (0.88) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 459
• Internet-economy payoff structures reward provocation because shame no longer constrains behavior #expands (0.86) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 823
• Ingroup members harshly punish peers who hold balanced or moderate outgroup attitudes #complicates (0.73) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2019
• Prejudice serves dual functions of lowering outgroup worth and boosting ingroup entitlement #expands (0.72)