In this post, I am going to comment on Angry by Design: Toxic Communication and Technical Architectures, an article by Luke Munn. This article examines the formation of social media as a digital construct and investigates whether these platforms were built solely to instigate negative human comparison (Munn, 2020).
First, let’s refresh ourselves on the most popular social media platforms today.
Facebook: Created in 2004, originally created to make a space for Harvard students and graduates to connect.
Instagram: Created in 2010, originally created to revolutionize photo-sharing.
TikTok: Created in 2016, originally created to share short comedic videos across the globe.
This article argues that the algorithms of popular social media platforms were intentionally made to cause negativity (Munn, 2020). These algorithms intentionally promote angry or extreme posts to put more eyes on them. This means that in the coding for these websites, there is a push towards more negative elements, like dislikes.
In my opinion, I find it difficult to believe that the people creating these algorithms created them intentionally with hate in their hearts. As I mentioned earlier, Facebook was created originally as a communication platform for Harvard students and alumni. This is why I find it difficult to connect what the author says with reality.
However, I do understand how hate is often more publicized than positivity. More often than not, I see negativity on my social media pages. I think this happens more often because of the society we live in, and how we interact with each other in the modern day. There is so much negativity in this world, and that’s why I believe it’s pushed more often on social media platforms.
Thank you for reading my post on my critique of social media and its negativity. Follow along for my last couple of posts as my collegiate career comes to an end!