Shutting down the right-wing rabbit hole is possible: First, follow the money
"The end goal is to make young people engage with and stay on the platforms as long as possible, because that means they can sell more advertising," lawyers for the Cabrillo Unified School District in Northern California argue in a district court lawsuit filed in May. "The YouTube, TikTok, Snap and Meta companies have learned that this is best accomplished by catering an endless flow of the lowest common denominator of content that is most provocative and toxic that they can get away with."
That's exactly the kind of content that Facebook's algorithms have favored, according to Frances Haugen. "When you give more distribution to content that can get reactions," she said in a recent MSNBC interview, "you end up rewarding more extreme content. Because the shortest path to 'like' is anger."
As the complaint in the California parents lawsuit argues, the issue is not the existence of social media but the companies' reliance on an "algorithmically-generated, endless feed to keep users scrolling in an induced 'flow state'; 'intermittent variable rewards' that manipulate dopamine delivery to intensify use; 'trophies' to reward extreme usage" and other features that keep people overstimulated and unable or unwilling to log off.
