New social trends and technologies frequently cause some level of moral panic. Moral panics of the past have been caused by all sorts of things, that now seem rather quaint: novels, bicycles, comics, television, videos, heavy metal, dungeons and dragons etc. But social media feels very different. It really does seem to be causing major societal disruption.

“The nuts are always the loudest” has been an observation forever.

This is showing how in the social media system the dynamics play out.

The claim that this isn't a hard problem to solve seems very optimistic to me.

The tiny minority dominates the feeds because that's how the incentives for algorithmic driven social media are structured. Do we really expect Meta, X, TikTok to anything that could reduce engagement?

Good luck having any of the mainstream social media apps add the banner they propose.

Great article format with all the dynamic widgets in it. Will have to give this a good read. It is a very interesting topic given how much of (global) public opinion is formed through "social" media.

"What percentage of the other side supports political violence"

Both Democrats and Republicans estimated 30% but actually.. only 10% of both sides supported political violence

That number is crazy in so many ways and the post is overly nonchalant about it. The "distortion" isn't what's worrying here