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E.R. Flynn's avatar

An interesting take. Personally, as a professional who works in advertising, I study the algorithms used by social media and aside from Meta feeding into the toxicity of Conformation bias and echo chamber while supplying targeted ads, Twitter is equally guilty of using this horrendous business model. I've tested the way the algorithm works and it mirrors back tweets based on what your own tweets contain. Tweet comedy, you see more comedy. Tweet politics you see Politics. However ironically it usually slanted with more tweets from those you oppose. Which is definitely one way to get a person to turn to the darker side of their psychology. It creates a defensive mindset and amps up the aggression one feels towards others. This is further amplified with feeding of ads that are targeted. A pretty evil algorithmic set-up once you really analyze it.

It's only going to get worse on Twitter since it'll be turned into a free for all without any controls over disinformation or offensive distortions. Ultimately this will probably doom Twitter since only total sociopaths will want to be around all that toxicity.

Personally, I've been moving more and more over to Counter Social, which is a much friendlier space, free from advertising and where people are honestly, sane. Best of all they don't tolerate disinfo and hate speech. You have to play nice and have real discussions with people, like what social media should be.

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