DON'T FEED THE DISINFORMATION ALGORITHM

by

Jasmine Partida

Social Media Subcommittee Chair

PCDP Communications Committee

When you look at any social media site (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, even LinkedIn and Tik Tok) their number one goal is to KEEP you on their platforms. This means, a post that interacted with a lot is bumped up by the social media platform and shown to more people. 

For example, if a news story post has a lot of reactions on it (reactions including likes, hearts, or even angry emojis), has lots of comments, and/or is shared a higher number of times - the social media platforms decide this is a high value piece of content and will show it to more people. 

In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg was forced to confirm that Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) found that high value posts often created an emotional response in viewers. The emotion that created the highest engagement (likes, shares, and comments) was anger. This means Facebook shows content that upsets users more than it will show you content that makes you smile. When you have a strong reaction to a post or story, you are more likely to engage with that content. 

I know I am not alone in saying I shared countless posts over the last five years of stories that upset me, and I wanted others to be aware of.

While this alone is problematic and creates a toxic Facebook feed, there is a larger issue at work that we watched play out in real time throughout the last two years: Disinformation spreads faster than factual information. Why? Because disinformation is designed to elicit a strong emotional response and fire up the masses.  

Disinformation articles feed directly into the algorithms social media platforms have designed.  

Here are ways you can help stop the spread of misinformation and/or disinformation online:

  1. Do not engage directly with a post that is wrong - do not click on it to read more, do not like, or add an angry emotion, do not share, and do not comment

  2. If you believe a post/article is factually wrong, do the research outside of the social media platform to confirm

  3. Click the top right hand corner where there are three dots and choose “report post” from the drop down menu. This sends a report to Facebook and when multiple reports are sent, it increases the chances of the content being removed.

  4. If you want to note the misinformation/disinformation and correct it - take a screenshot of the post for context and write a new post with the correct information in your post.

  5. And as a final option, you can privately message the person who posted the piece of misinformation/disinformation and send them the correct information, requesting they update or remove their post. 

Social media platforms are not yet regulated in a way that keeps disinformation in check. In fact, currently, they are increasing our exposure to disinformation at a rather alarming rate. 

By stopping the spread of disinformation, reporting it, and making corrections, we can each be part of the solution. Starve the disinformation algorithm.