If there’s one thing social media platforms have in common, it’s a growing number of negative posts. Is dodging them is easier than you think?
There doesn’t seem to be a great deal about social media on which I would agree with Elon Musk. He’s the guy who bought the platform we knew as Twitter. In a short time, he transformed it into something that feels almost unrecognizable. But I read a recent article about his take on negative posts on his platform, X.
I hate to say it, but on this issue, I do agree with him. Business Insider reported last month that Musk wrote about “toxic posts” on his platform. Not surprisingly, he put the blame on the users.
But not surprisingly, that’s a logical argument most users don’t want to acknowledge.
It’s the algorithm, stupid
Musk said the best way to see more toxic content on X is to interact with toxic content.
“One of the strongest signals is if you forward X posts to friends, it assumes you like that content a lot, because it takes effort to forward,” Musk wrote.
The algorithm sees you interacting with content and tries its best to find more content like it to show you. Gone are the days where everyone could go on social media and just see the latest content.
Today, algorithms watch what you click on, what you “like” or “love” or “care” about, etc. With that information in mind, they then search available content for more examples along the same lines. It offers that content up, hoping you’ll interact with it the same way.
Your interaction on their platform is a good stat they can show to their advertisers to demonstrate user engagement.
So if a politician ticks you off — on either side of the political spectrum — and you share the post or comment, the platform will try to show you more people saying the same kind of thing.
Musk then added this important point:
Unfortunately, if the actual reason you forwarded the content to friends was because you were outraged by it, we are currently not smart enough to realize that.
I chuckle a little every time I see someone go on a news site’s Facebook post and leave a snide comment about the post itself. People love to leave comments like “Slow news day” or “Why is this news?” I chuckle because they’re setting themselves up for more aggravation.
And while they think they’re taking their little dig, they’re actually benefitting the social media platform they claim they hate and the media outlet they seem so eager to insult.
You have to love the irony sometimes.
Share puppies instead?
Musk went on to say, “True” when a user suggested that people should share posts about puppies so their feed doesn’t become so toxic.
I don’t know how often one would need to share posts about puppies — or kittens, for that matter — eliminate all toxicity. In fact, I suspect that there’s no way to kill all of it.
The same algorithm that wants to surface the kind of posts you already interact with is always surfacing posts you don’t to see if it’ll strike gold with something new. If you skip past that kind of post, no problem. The algorithm keeps looking.
But if you do interact with that post, the algorithm thinks it did a good thing. It’ll bring you more of the same.
Social media algorithms might actually remind some people of an old saying we all grew up with. It’s a saying many too easily “forget” on social when they trade good manners for snark. But that saying was, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.”
If you want more negative posts on your social feed, you probably should continue to “forget” that sage advice.