[luckylion]

Do you believe the same to be true for Facebook as well? Why is Twitter encouraging outrage-engagement via the (somewhat filtered) Trending section? Why aren't you actively trying to decrease political engagement if it's a net negative?

[twitter_anon]

> Do you believe the same to be true for Facebook as well?

I have no idea about Facebook. I barely even use it so all my information is second-hand.

> Why is Twitter encouraging outrage-engagement via the (somewhat filtered) Trending section?

We're not, at least not intentionally. Do you think we are? If so, why?

The Trending section is still biased towards things that are being talked about frequently. Unfortunately, that means outrage-inducing topics will tend to bubble up there. We're working on making trend identification more sophisticated in order to provide better context, but it's a really hard problem with such short snippets of context.

> Why aren't you actively trying to decrease political engagement if it's a net negative?

"Political engagement" overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, "outrage engagement". Outrage engagement is a net negative; political engagement that does not devolve into misinformation and toxicity is not. We are actively trying to decrease engagement with misinformation and outrage, but it's a hard problem. Also, frankly, it's being hampered by a lack of focus internally that is leaving the teams involved with no clear direction other than "do something, now!".

Non-toxic political engagement is a net positive for us. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater by shutting it all down, assuming we even could (it's fundamentally the same problem, though a little bit easier). I see how other people might see that as the better option to shut down the toxicity and misinformation, though.

[luckylion]

> We're not, at least not intentionally. Do you think we are? If so, why?

I haven't been an active Twitter user for years, but whenever I visit it these days, Trending looks like it's at least partially optimized for outrage. I understand it's not actually "what's popular" (because otherwise it would constantly be about Justin Bieber & co), it's curated, or at least topics need to be approved in some form to be allowed to trend, right?

> Non-toxic political engagement is a net positive for us.

I've seen very few non-toxic political engagement on Twitter, but maybe we have a different understanding of what is healthy engagement. I'm not sure there is a baby in that bathwater. I'm not even sure it's bathwater.

From my perspective, it's either a shouting match with a lot of groupthink and -speech or somebody talking to their followers about how evil the outgroup is. And that's not because I'm looking at controversial things, I believe. I visit some developer's Twitter feed and one or two clicks later I'm in the middle. It's like that Wikipedia game where you start on a random article and need to make it to Hitler with the least amount of clicks, but it's less challenging because almost all clicks lead to outrage.

You seem to be more focused on whether what engages the users is factually true. Is it that advertisers don't want to be seen next to obvious fake news? Do advertisers not care to have their brand associate with not-actually-honest-but-not-fake-news-either outrage-engagement by, say, Robert Reich?

[webmaven]

> I'm not sure there is a baby in that bathwater. I'm not even sure it's bathwater.

Brilliant. I'm swiping it.

[smhost]

> We are actively trying to decrease engagement with misinformation and outrage

Can you talk more about this? On its face, this seems like an explicitly anti-leftist position. Some philosophers even claim that the role of the political Left is the organization of societal rage. For instance, if Twitter had its way in the domestication of political speech on its platform, then it might have suppressed conversations about BLM and prevented it from having a chance to become mainstream.