[fallingknife]

And what kind of accountability is that? An engagement algorithm is a simple thing that gives people more of what they want. It just turns out that what we want is a lot more negative than most people are willing to admit to themselves.

[Applejinx]

I would rephrase that to 'what we predictably respond to'.

You can legitimately claim that people respond in a very striking and predictable way to being set on fire, and even find ways to exploit this behavior for your benefit somehow, and it still doesn't make setting people on fire a net benefit or a service to them in any way.

Just because you can condition an intelligent organism in a certain way doesn't make that become a desirable outcome. Maybe you're identifying a doomsday switch, an exploit in the code that resists patching and bricks the machine. If you successfully do that, it's very much on you whether you make the logical leap to 'therefore we must apply this as hard as possible!'

[clippyplz]

Engagement can be quite unrelated to what people like. A well crafted troll comment will draw tons of engagement, not because people like it.

[fallingknife]

If people didn't like engaging with troll comments, they wouldn't do it. It's not required, and they aren't getting paid.

[zaphar]

This comment has a remarkable lack of nuance in it. That isn't even remotely close to how how human motivation works. We do all kinds of things motivated by emotions that have nothing to do with "liking" it.

[herval]

I don't think people "like" it as much as hate elicits a response from your brain, like it or not.

If people had perfect self-control, they wouldn't do it. IMO it's somewhat irresponsible for the algorithm makers to profit from that - it's basically selling an unregulated, heavily optimized drug. They downrank scammy content for instance, which limits its reach - why not also downrank trolling? (obviously bc the former directly impacts profits, but not the latter, but still)

[mdhb]

This is really a child like understanding of the world.