Follow

I think I just coined a term: "outrage dividend".

Imagine two media orgs.

A is a reliable media org, with fact-checking, reporting, etc. Their articles are nuanced, well-argued, and usually stay away from sensationalism and clickbait.

B is a disinformation peddler. They don't care about facts, as long as their sensationalist, clickbaity crap gets the clicks, and ad revenue rolls in.

Outrage gets clicks on FB. It's *easier* for B to get the clicks.

That's the outrage dividend.

@rysiek
Sounds like a good terminology!

Btw, why is it bad to redraft? 🤔 Does it mess with people's timelines or something? I do it sometimes so I'd like to know... :BlobCatMelt:

@grob @rysiek

If you're talking about Mastodon posts, at the moment you can only "delete and redraft", so if you redraft you also delete the original post.

If there are any replies, it will break the thread and orphan the replies.

When you post the redraft, none of the replies to the old post will be connected to the new post.

Hopefully the edit button will be activated soon 🤞

@feditips @grob @rysiek How can a non-existing edit button be activated? eh eh.

@jayrope @feditips @grob "not activated" in this case means "relevant code exists in software, but the interface element is currently hidden".

No need to get hung-up by literal meaning here. Everybody perfectly understands what was being said.

@jayrope @grob @rysiek

Mastodon's edit code is already done, but apparently there are some technical snags which need to be fixed before it can be switched on.

For those interested, tech details are here:

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/p

You can see hints of this code on some PeerTube videos, which (for some random reason) say "edited" if you view them through Mastodon.

@jayrope @grob @rysiek

See also here:

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/p

I'm not a dev so I don't fully follow, but it seems the editing function is split across several different bits of the code.

@rysiek Ukraine is winning friend just need 100s of billions in weapons, millions of conscripts and volunteers. Russia has been pushed back to Moscow and is on the verge of surrendering, I saw it on CNN

@rysiek it's a bummer that we need these term but I think you're spot on. Yellow journalism, sensationalism etc. is such an ugly and blatant manipulation.

@rysiek Very good observation, I like the naming. And yes, sadly this is the current state or journalism due to the algorithms of social platforms.

@ChrisMcZork @rysiek

its also done in a more subtle way throughout "normal" British local news sites (not even with any political agenda) - stories of crimes/fires/accidents seem popular so many add in an endless feed of incidents which can be from 400km away rather than the local area; which increases the general fear of crime and concerns over road safety even in relatively peaceful/safe areas...

@rysiek @ChrisMcZork

the most egregious example of this I saw was when there had been a shortage of serious crimes/Court reports in Scotland (partly due to a backlog in Court but also a genuine decrease in crime in the country), and the news sites simply started adding random crime stories from Northern England to fill up the space (rather than articles about pet dogs which they use in London/Essex as there is already a high enough crime rate)

@rysiek

I think an improvement would be if the whole term had more negative connotation.

Like "outrage rentseeking".

Dividend is something earned, i.e. past tense. Rentseeking communicates more the intent to do so, and people can beware not to fall in that trap.

@humanetech "rentseeking" would put the focus on those who seek that rent (i.e. tabloids, disinformation peddlers, etc).

Instead, I believe the focus needs to be on the *enablers* of it, like Facebook. Those who make this possible in their walled gardens.

But I agree that a more negative term would be nice. I just have not found any.

@rysiek

As enablers they are in the act of offering "outrage engagement".

In the attention-grabbing biz of keeping eyeballs on the platform, they often use soft-spoken words.. "We want to engage our users with the content they love".

No FB, you are a fucking outrage engagement franchise (OEF).

@humanetech
We've been using a term, (#)forcedNews for a while, but yes, that sort of emotional rollercoaster is what they aim for — #MurdochRags same. They want to enrage you so the world you live by is framed by them.

There was a faux #ZuckerMatrix website that said something like "connecting you with the things that enrage you", which was very lol-worthy.

@rysiek

@dsfgs @rysiek

Someone should make a fake UX design of Facebook UI using terms as "enragement feed", "outrage publisher", "cashcow area" and then leak it to The Onion ("found in the train, left by a FB employee")

@robertwgehl @rysiek

Ha, fantastic 😂

Yeah well indeed.. they've been there, done that already 🙏

@rysiek Just sounds like you're talking about clickbait, albeit a specific type.

@Blort no, I am talking about the phenomenon that makes clickbait *work*.

Consider "buoyancy". It's the phenomenon that makes "ships" work. Ships rely on buoyancy, of course, but buoyancy is obviously a different thing than ships.

Clickbait relies on outrage dividend. But outrage dividend is not itself clickbait.

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Mastodon for Tech Folks

This Mastodon instance is for people interested in technology. Discussions aren't limited to technology, because tech folks shouldn't be limited to technology either!
https://mastodon.technology/@rysiek/108546016428074070
mastodon.technology
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-33
102337
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:LVSKEGSU6PKBRTAL5CDY6RHER7VC2NXH
<urn:uuid:ceee85dc-3891-426a-988e-209d00db761b>
2022-08-10T06:05:26Z
67.207.91.193
text/html
sha1:AYOEWOFHAIHSUWMVZFFXSOSWX3GGFDF7
<urn:uuid:ee05a880-240d-4e54-b9f1-5365232df1b8>
https://mastodon.technology/@rysiek/108546016428074070
response
<urn:uuid:92119d33-c115-4c2d-acdb-a42a8cbc5ba9>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-33
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-209
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/