Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation (Washington Post)

Washington Post: Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation. “The company’s data scientists confirmed in 2019 that posts that sparked angry reaction emoji were disproportionately likely to include misinformation, toxicity and low-quality news. That means Facebook for three years systematically amped up some of the worst of its platform, making it more prominent in users’ feeds and spreading it to a much wider audience. The power of the algorithmic promotion undermined the efforts of Facebook’s content moderators and integrity teams, who were fighting an uphill battle against toxic and harmful content.”