[phrh8]

These platforms have hyper-optimized their products to show as much stuff as possible that people will engage with (share, click), so that they also engage with ads and stay active.

The problem is there is often some time when there is no news. No news isn't interesting, so it doesn't get shared as much as "news". Take the moments immediately following a disaster. Two types of news articles will show up:

"There was a shooting. We don't know anything yet, but we will keep you posted". Boring.

"We know who the killer is. Bobby Bobertson done it". Woah!

Now imagine you are a heavy social media user. You don't want to stay silent on such a big news story, so you want to share something showing you are engaged. Which story do you share?

(edit: removed duplicate "the problem is")

[grandalf]

This comment is absolutely right. The algorithms are not optimized to inform people, they are optimized to maximize the number of ads people click on while consuming whatever content the algorithms promoted to the top.

This is at best a conflict of interest when it comes to content that ought to be viewed as news. But there is significant pressure these days to blend news with entertainment (which simply means engagement, which entails ad sales).

[brewdad]

I was never so happy to stay off social media as I was last night. I was awake, but not online, for about 2 hours after the LV shooting. My phone had a headline about 2 people dead when I went to bed. My wife woke up at 5am and shared the news with me when I woke up. By the time I engaged with the news sites, it was 8am this morning and most of the initial bullshit had been filtered away. Saved myself from a lot of unnecessary anxiety.