> He said that individuals make the choice whether to listen to that information or to rely on less reputable information spread by friends and family.

> "That's their choice. They are allowed to do that. You have an issue with those people. You don't have an issue with Facebook. You can't put that on me."

This is such nonsense.

Psychology tells us that we are susceptible to message repetition and perceived authority.

At the most basic level this is a necessary element for the survival of the species: Parent constantly tells a kid not to get too close to the edge of a cliff. If the brain wasn't wired to accept such messages without question humanity might have failed the evolutionary fitness test.

I've seen comments on this thread attributing aspects of the social media effect to the village idiot. That's also nonsense. Perfectly intelligent people who are demonstrably not idiots fall prey to these psychological effects. Once someone ascribes trust to a source --whether it is an individual, group, news organization, politician, etc.-- it is nearly impossible to make them see the errors in what they are being led to believe. It takes a particularly open mindset to be able to look outside of what I am going to call indoctrination.

In the US it is easy to identify some of these groups. Besides religious groupings, anyone who will generally refer to themselves as "life-long democrat" or "life-long republican" is far more likely to accept a world view and "truths" from members of those groups. Religion, of course, is likely the oldest such resonant chambers.

Facebook and other social media outlets, along with their algorithms, have introduced segmentation and grouping at a sub-level never before possible in society. Worse than that, they allow and, in fact, are the source of, a constant bombardment of ideas and ideologies in sometimes incredibly narrow domains. This is great when you are trying to understand the difference between using synthetic vs. organic motor oil in your engine. Not so great when it makes someone descend into a deep dark and narrow hole of hatred.

That's the problem. And yes, FB and social media are absolutely at fault of enabling for the constant repetition of some of the most negative, violent and counterproductive messaging humanity has ever seen.

I have mentioned this in other related discussions. We've seen this first hand in our own family. Over the last four years or so we two family members (cousins) who grew up together descend into equally extreme opposites thanks to FB. It is interesting because prior to this happening they didn't even have a FB account. They each got one at the same time to keep in touch with family. Four years later one is what I could only describe as a hate-filled-republican and the other an equal and opposite hate-filled-democrat. And 100% of this happened because FB drove these two people into deeper, darker and more hateful dark holes day after day, for years. The damage done is likely irreversible.

They (FB) didn't need to do that. Yet, that's what these geniuses thought was the "right" thing to do. Brilliant.

I am not generally in favor of heavy-handed government intervention. And yet, I have no idea how else something like this could be corrected in order to make these social media companies stop being radioactive to society. We have probably wasted at least a decade optimizing for hatred. How sad.

EDIT: I was going to say "unintentionally optimizing", however, at some point anyone with one bit of intelligence could understand this was trending in the wrong direction. Not making modifications to the recommendations algorithms to reduce the occurrence of deep dives into dark holes of hatred is a form of intentionally promoting such results. Again, sad.