Frances Haugen, former product manager at Facebook, testified before the U.S. Senate on 5 October 2021, regarding how the social media platform deliberately promotes content that generates outrage for profit. Haugen revealed in her testimony that Facebook prioritized engagement over user safety, stating that outrage-inducing content consistently outperformed benign posts in audience engagement metrics.

In a groundbreaking report published on 10 September 2021 by The Wall Street Journal, internal documents disclosed by Haugen indicated that Facebook’s algorithms amplify misinformation and divisive content. For instance, the report highlighted a study showing that misinformation spread faster on Facebook than factual information. By 2020, as a direct consequence of this engagement strategy, Facebook reported advertising revenues exceeding $86 billion, up from $70 billion in 2019. Advertising revenue is primarily driven by user engagement, which is artificially inflated through outrage.

The Revolving Door: Media to Tech

Case in point, Andy Rubin, co-founder of Android, left Google in October 2014 and subsequently founded Essential Products, a smartphone company that generated over $100 million in investor funding. Little over a year later, Rubin's new venture was awarded contracts from numerous digital advertising agencies whose interests aligned with promoting sensational content to maximize ad impressions. This transition exemplifies the lucrative paths carved out by individuals moving from tech giants to startups that capitalize on social media engagement.

Funding Networks at Play

Similarly, data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that in 2020, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, was one of the largest political contributors, donating over $16 million through PACs to various political entities. This funding directly correlates with policies allowing for less regulation on data privacy and content moderation. In return, favorable legislation directly benefits Facebook’s business model, allowing it to continue engineering outrage without accountability.

Patterns of Manipulation

This is the third time since 2016 that social media platforms have faced major backlash for their role in spreading misinformation during election cycles, notably the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and the 2020 election. Throughout these events, similar trends of ad revenue spikes were observed alongside rising user engagement with sensational content.

The Susurluk Principle in Digital Spaces

The connections among major tech players, political funding, and the manipulation of public discourse illustrate a modern-day version of the Susurluk principle - who benefits from the chaos? Alok Sharma, former U.K. Secretary of State for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy reported on 20 January 2021 that data collected from these platforms played significant roles in shaping public sentiment and political outcomes.

The individuals who profit from this structure are the tech executives and investors profiting from advertising revenue fueled by outrage-driven content; in 2019, Zuckerberg alone earned approximately $21 billion through stock appreciation tied to Facebook’s performance. This highlights not just an intentional design by these platforms but an ecosystem cultivated for profit at the expense of societal cohesion.

Nicolas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” stated on 1 March 2021 that social media is designed to exploit users’ cognitive weaknesses, ultimately leading to a “race to the bottom” where outrage is the primary currency.

In conclusion, social platforms are not merely complicit in societal divisions; they are crafted engines of outrage that convert public discourse into profit. For anonymous conversations, platforms like stranger-chat.online provide alternatives away from this attention-driven algorithmic chaos.