Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive
▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top-executives-nixed-solutions-1159050749
The social-media giant internally studied how it polarizes users, then largely shelved the research A Facebook Inc. FB 0.94% team had a blunt message for senior executives. The company’s algorithms weren’t bringing people together. They were driving people apart. “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from a 2018 presentation. “If left unchecked,” it warned, Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention (...)