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by iamerroragent 1151 days ago
Content mill runs rage content all day too. Unfortunately those get eyes and thus revenue. More a comment on us as a species than anything else.

On an individual to individual basis we might recognize bad content meant to feed off of our base emotional instincts versus content meant for accuracy and to inform.

However collectively it appears there's more of us that rather get sucked into the rage content than try for objective or accurate reporting.

This mirrors the transition of television News from not needed to be profitable to needing to be profitable. Look at the success of cable news.

3 comments

> More a comment on us as a species than anything else.

I think this is less of a comment about us as a species and more a comment about the economic systems that we have in place. Our economic systems used to support journalism.

"it's just human nature" can be a powerfully self-fulfilling prophecy

We ought to exercise what agency we have in shaping social systems, but not only this, we need to remind ourselves regularly that we do have agency in order to exercise it

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." -- Alice Walker
Our economic systems used to be very bad at scaling. They also used to be very bad at incentivizing value-add economic activity. Which system do you want?
I don't want society to develop in the most economically advanced driveling pile of shit that ever existed.
Our ids tend to run wild on the internet, so it’s not surprising. It is extremely disappointing that there is always someone willing to take advantage, but that is the story of humanity I suppose. My hope is somehow we are capable of creating something better than this.
Is that just going to disappear when AI is so good at milling rage content that no publishers can compete?

Why would someone choose to wade through a listicle when they can get their rage unfiltered and on tap?