"At a minimum, we should stop promoting content based on ambiguous signals, as it not only promotes bad experiences (in some cases), but also makes it easier for bad actors to game our algorithms by creating content (e.g. clickbait, sensationalism, outrage-bait) that our algorithms think are wildly popular, but are bad user experiences."

"Unlike communication with close friends and family, virality is something new we have introduced to many ecosystems (so new that many spell-checkers don't recognize the word) and it occurs because we intentionally encourage it for business reasons." "Unfortunately, research has shown how outrage and misinformation are more likely to be viral, and recent experiments that deprecate these models indicate that removing these models does positively impact metrics for misinformation and hate. Not all content that benefits from our choices here is bad, but as long as we continue to optimize for overall engagement and not solely what we believe individual users will value, we have an obligation to consider what the effect of optimizing for business outcomes has on the societies we engage in." "We prioritize content based on engagement, but engagement doesn't necessarily mean that a user actually wants to see more of something. One of our biggest signals we use to provide more similar content is comments and as this Buzzfeed article points out (image from article below), a comment that you hate a thing can be seen as a positive signal leading content to get outsized distribution." "People game this in various ways, posting ever more outrageous things to get comments and reactions that our algorithms interpret as signs we should allow things to go viral. Publishers and campaigns tell us that they are incentivized to do this and we can see in our data that the above tactic of inciting users to negatively comment works to get more distribution (analysis by Delia Mocanu in graph below)." "At a minimum, we should stop promoting content based on ambiguous signals, as it not only promotes bad experiences (in some cases), but also makes it easier for bad actors to game our algorithms by creating content (e.g. clickbait, sensationalism, outrage-bait) that our algorithms think are wildly popular, but are bad user experiences."