I will call out the ABC here for taking a lot of the boots on the ground work that Tom Tanuki - independent journo (https://youtube.com/@tomtanuki) has done with these far right slopaganda mills, slicing off the prior recognition and pretending it's a big new problem they just found. While a bit of this is new... Is it that new? Is this report that detailed? Hmmmmm

This isn't anything new, it was abundantly clear after Facebook removed their fact checking team during covid that the priority was engagement over everything else, and rage bait is exactly that.

I just want to add, that they (FB and other big social media) probably understood what propaganda power they wield after 2016 facebook and cambridge analytica scandal.

Personally - I think that this was the moment when silicon valley billionaires without shadow of a doubt understood that they have power what used to be reserved only for state actors. Bonus - for using that power they get fined penny on the dollar at most or just slap on the wrist.

Update: now situation is even worse - states actively buy propaganda with social media companies, making those companies even more rich and influential.

Facebook is still big in my country, Lithuania, and both rage-bait and other type of fringe content is rampant, and even worse after fact-checking was removed. It is wild, and with some outside actors (specific country that shall not be named) it is a big problem with political and social effects being felt IRL.

How is this any different than traditional media? Cable news creates fake problems and controversy constantly, and pay their news anchors well to do so.

In return, many companies that rely on these problems, turn around and advertise on these networks.

Social media is just following the same strategy.

What are you trying to say? That Facebook should be excused because others also behave badly?

Otherwise, we can dislike both things and it adds nothing to say "but why aren't your talking about the other thing instead". And for what it's worth, there is a pretty clear difference between the journalistic standards of FB bait and of the legacy media.

With social media you can spend small amounts of money , create media and target people half across the globe from you.

ruzzian troll farm employee cannot call into fox news and say “create 100 John Does impersonating MAGA texans (or whatever), present them as real and I will pay you 5$ for that”. Such troll can automate all this and present media somewhat realistically on FB.

Sure, and Ebola and influenza share traits too. I’m not sure that makes them interchangeable though.

Social media has been protected by the Safe Harbour rules because they had millions of users creating content which was difficult to monitor and moderate.

If they start producing their own content they might get considered like a news organisation with a whole different set of rules being applied to them and Safe Harbour being inapplicable.

> How is this any different than traditional media?

Scale, lower entry bar, lack of regulation.

FB is built on rage bait, what else do they have beside cute videos?

Horrible sympathy and religion bait like "I bet nobody will upvote this poor sick child with one leg, won't you? 1 amen = 1 prayer!"

Ironically, this article is rage-bait.

Ragebait is what FB runs on. A lot of these people do not even believe what they say. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin...

FB and IG reels both. Twitter gets a lot of rightfully owed criticism about it's fair share but its always weird to me seeing people slam twitter then go right on to IG or some other meta owned app as if its significantly different.

I'm so glad I got myself off Instagram and Reddit, the longer I go without them the more I realise what massive cognitohazards both of them are if you spend too much time on them. Different mechanisms but both were much more of a net drain on me than I realised before leaving them.

Is it ethical wrong in this case, to wish those persons to get beaten up one day, by one of the people where they fueled their hate (who do take it out on other people for real)? So they reap what they sow?

Understandable but wrong.

People want to feel like they're doing something in the "culture war". Rage-bait gives them an outlet. Facebook might be saving us from total civil war here.

Social media platforms have been paying out for attention seeking behaviour for a long time now. It’s why every YouTube video now has the same lame shocked face, red arrows, and clickbait title. It’s why assholes film themselves intentionally pissing people off for TikTok. It’s a whole category called nuisance tubing.

I remember during COVID I saw a number of YouTubers swing from producing normal content into conspiracy shit. Their views ballooned. I saw a nasty feedback loop where the more controversial content received more engagement, hence more ad revenue, leading to more of it being produced.

These platforms are actively degenerating society; there’s a reason the CCP is keeping tight control and reportedly rebalancing things to promote educational creators on China’s.

Indeed. What I noticed is that the quality of the videos went down on youtube in the last 3 years. Now, the quality was never as great as it used to be anyway, but Google changed various things that made youtube worse. They are slowly killing off youtube without realising it.

A lot of channels got bought by private equity. YouTube is saturated with similar content so creators have to resort to clickbait to keep up. AI has allowed creators to increase their efficiency writing scripts.

I don't know what you believe Google changed about YouTube, but I believe it has just made itself worse.

Especially before elections, it feels like they rewards people for being toxic

First of all, Facebook is not even the worst offender. That'd have to go to X and TikTok. Rage bait, propaganda, and straight up bad actors with money pushing their agenda. If you got angry because of a TikTok video, you are being exploited.

Some of these actors also put a lot of money into campuses in the west, so when you're done watching some terrible propaganda, you can join a local club and find your way to more people getting angry at misinformation. This is how we get stuff like "globalize intifada" and students "occupying" buildings.

I wish this was just hyperbole, but really, go check for yourself what kind of money state actors put into schools and universities in the west, and why.

Can't they just do it with AI ?

Not Clickbait.

If you provide both:

a) a service to earn money from content

b) an algo promoting those videos

then yes, IMHO they pay them directly for the content produced.

There is a distinction between:

- Meta is commissioning or sponsoring rage-bait

- Controversial creators are earning money through Facebook's content monetization program

The title is ambiguous (at first, I thought it was the first case), and that's where the clickbait lies.

No doubt that also the second case is a serious problem, but that's orthogonal to the ambiguity of the title.

So they do directly pay them?

When will people learn that rage bait content thrives thanks to people who are so delicate and emotional that they get unhealthily enraged at such content?

Stop raging on the internet and the rage bait content will disappear overnight.

Stop buying oil, chasing newest phones, luxuries, and the climate will get better overnight.

It’s all on the consumers, contrary to Redditor belief that the big corporations are at fault, it’s simply the matter of demand and thus supply. Not the other way around.

Take accountability. I know nowadays it is very unpopular to take accountability but this is the first step to make world better place. You can only change your own habits.

> You can only change your own habits

Rather like smoking, I can only change my own habits (have never smoked) but that won't prevent me from being harmed by other people's habits.

Even if I don't use Facebook, I can be harmed by Facebook voters.

Out of interest, would you have made this argument with respect to Big Tobacco back in the day? In my view surveillance-based behavioural recommendation engines belong very much in the same category.

I would say that initiative to combat big tobacco didn’t emerge out of some bored statesman.

It was what people voted for and endorsed, one way or another. Grassroots activists and various initiatives.

Meta could help the situation, for instance by providing fact-checking tools and banning rage-bait creators.

Instead they have removed those tools and are paying these creators. So it's not just consumers to blame here.

Well, you use their platform and thus line their pockets. Why? Because it’s convenient, it’s lazy and “free” and you sold your soul and data for far too cheap.

If the population cannot behave in their best interest then the whole western civ gets Darwin Award and I am fine with that honestly.

And it is actually happening in real time in almost all categories from fertility rate to losing psychological warfare.

But we don't all use Facebook, Facebook found its niche of tech-illiterate people to abuse.

The population is a wide demographic and it would be nice if companies didn't try to exploit parts of it.

I'm not holding my breath for masses to become informed, rational, responsible and balanced overall.

And why would the responsibility lie solely on consumers to act perfectly

Now people understand why Suckerberg is called Suckerberg.

Those greedy billionaires also keep on having ties to right wing nuts. Let's not forget Melon Usk with his suspicious right-arm-raising gestures (having done so twice, which is quite strange when you do the same gesture twice in a row - I mean there can be no doubt about this if you do it twice; twice is an accident?).

The irony here is that ABC is the platfrom doing the rage-baiting.