There’s tons of disinformation being spewed onto social media and all other online platforms leading up to an election.
That disinformation in the form of paid ads and engagement-driving viral posts is officially against the rules everywhere, but if the rules aren’t enforced, they’re meaningless.
TL;DR: less effective enforcement against disinformation = more profits for the platforms
To them, Misinformation = Money.
By disbanding safety and ethics councils and committees they are allowing for greater volumes of misinformation to flow through their services.
Misinformation tends to increase closer to elections.
None of the other comments explain why misinformation makes money.
It’s because stuff like misinformation, lies by omission, and rage bait all tend to incite very emotional responses in people. These people then engage with the post via likes, retweets, viewership, dislikes etc. that tell the algorithm to increase said post’s reach to more people. Platforms want to consume as much of people’s time as possible for monetization purposes, so misinformation really helps them.
That being said, all of this is pure speculation. If I were to guess why they disbanded their T&S team strictly from the headline, it would be because of incompetence.
I’m not much into American politics and have not read a single paragraph of TOS in my life. Could you please explain?
It’s because doing the right thing when it comes to algorithmic social spaces means destroying the golden goose.
There’s tons of disinformation being spewed onto social media and all other online platforms leading up to an election.
That disinformation in the form of paid ads and engagement-driving viral posts is officially against the rules everywhere, but if the rules aren’t enforced, they’re meaningless.
TL;DR: less effective enforcement against disinformation = more profits for the platforms
To them, Misinformation = Money.
By disbanding safety and ethics councils and committees they are allowing for greater volumes of misinformation to flow through their services.
Misinformation tends to increase closer to elections.
None of the other comments explain why misinformation makes money.
It’s because stuff like misinformation, lies by omission, and rage bait all tend to incite very emotional responses in people. These people then engage with the post via likes, retweets, viewership, dislikes etc. that tell the algorithm to increase said post’s reach to more people. Platforms want to consume as much of people’s time as possible for monetization purposes, so misinformation really helps them.
That being said, all of this is pure speculation. If I were to guess why they disbanded their T&S team strictly from the headline, it would be because of incompetence.