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Social media harms democracy by spreading rumors, survey shows
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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Corporate social media has had one goal, and it's had that goal since the 2010s, which is to increase engagement and increase numbers.
This was revealed quite plainly all the way back in, I think, 2013, when it was revealed that Facebook was doing experiments and found that hateful speech, disagreements, slander, and all this stuff increased engagement. Getting people to go at each other's throats increased engagement more than bringing people together into communities, and as such, Facebook started to optimize for this.
More than 13 years ago.
That started a societal tonal shift in societies affected by Facebook and future social media companies that followed the same pattern.
And look where we are today: no one can get along anywhere. Everyone's afraid of everyone. We have increasingly unstable social structures that are imploding in themselves, while the rich and powerful keep asserting control while the peons go for each other's throats over the scraps.