Social media engagement peaks for content near the boundary of what platforms allow

Evidence

For example, in 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that a slide from an internal Facebook presentation warned that ‘our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness’. In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg himself published the following graphic in a public post, noting that engagement with content on Facebook dramatically increases as it approaches the ‘policy line’ of what’s allowed. He specifically mentioned: ‘our research suggests that no matter where we draw the lines for what is allowed, as a piece of content gets closer to that line, people will engage with it more on average, even when they tell us afterwards, they don’t like the content’. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 403

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on algorithmic radicalization and ‘engagement-based ranking’ critiques from the Trust and Safety scholarship already in the reader’s knowledge base. — connects to: Platform feature design deliberately disrupts influencer curation norms to capture more content — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 262

Broader Connections

• Platform feature design deliberately disrupts influencer curation norms to capture more content #corroborates (0.75) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 262