How to think about polarization on Facebook

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

I.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published a report about Facebook’s efforts to fight polarization since 2016, based on internal documents and interviews with current and former employees. Rich with detail, the report describes how Facebook researched ways to reduce the spread of divisive content on the platform, and in many cases set aside the recommendations of employees working on the problem. Here are Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman:

“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from a 2018 presentation. “If left unchecked,” it warned, Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.” […]

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