08/27/2023
Surveys of Twitter and Facebook users show people are exhausted by and unhappy with the overrepresentation of extreme political content or controversial topics in their feeds.
In a review published Aug. 3 in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, social scientists from Northwestern University describe how the misalignment between the objective of social media algorithms, designed to boost user engagement, and functions of human psychology can lead to increased polarization and misinformation.
“There are reputational components that Twitter and Facebook must face when it comes to elections and the spread of misinformation,” said the article’s first author William Brady. “The social platforms also stand to benefit from better aligning their algorithms to improve user experience.”
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Surveys of Twitter and Facebook users show people are exhausted by and unhappy with the overrepresentation of extreme political content or controversial topics in their feeds. In a review published today (Aug. 3) in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, social scientists from Northwestern Univer...