Item — HN Reader

> The most worrying part is that I don't know if this sentiment is actually widespread and a seriously held belief. It makes me worry that we might see a continued escalation of political violence this year.

Maybe I’m just more aware of it now vs. 20-30 years ago, but I feel the division with our country just keeps growing more and more with each passing year/presidency.

And I feel like social media/FB play a big part in this. It seems the extremes on both sides just continue to grow more extreme. And I feel like if social media — and news media — would just go away, we’d see much less division/extremism.

But unfortunately extremism, shock, anger, and contempt for “the other side” is what gets clicks/views.

I don’t know what the solution is. Well, the solution is what I said: get rid of social & (extreme) news media. But there’s no way that will ever happen; extremism breeds extremism.

2 comments

> Maybe I’m just more aware of it now vs. 20-30 years ago, but I feel the division with our country just keeps growing more and more with each passing year/presidency.

I keep seeing this. Within my still living parents’ lifetime, people were literally and legally “divided” by Jim Crow laws and segregation. America wasn’t exactly a great egalitarian nation in the 60s.

Not to mention Vietnam and Kent State.

I completely understand the frustration and the conclusion you arrived at. The problem is echo chambers existed before the advent of online social media. Safe to say they have existed since nearly the dawn of human consciousness.

The difference is that once algorithms could be optimized for "engagement", a company simply can't resist amping up the dopamine hits. Because the ultimate goal of those networks is persistent, unrelenting attention. They are for-profit businesses whose primary income is ads (upwards of 98% of Facebook/Meta revenue.)

So the more attention you can drum up, and the longer you can maintain it, the faster the money printer can go brrrr.