22 comments

  • florkbork 39 minutes ago

    I will call out the ABC here for taking a lot of the boots on the ground work that Tom Tanuki - independent journo (https://youtube.com/@tomtanuki) has done with these far right slopaganda mills, slicing off the prior recognition and pretending it's a big new problem they just found. While a bit of this is new... Is it that new? Is this report that detailed? Hmmmmm

  • fosron 33 minutes ago

    Facebook is still big in my country, Lithuania, and both rage-bait and other type of fringe content is rampant, and even worse after fact-checking was removed. It is wild, and with some outside actors (specific country that shall not be named) it is a big problem with political and social effects being felt IRL.

  • bilekas 37 minutes ago

    This isn't anything new, it was abundantly clear after Facebook removed their fact checking team during covid that the priority was engagement over everything else, and rage bait is exactly that.

  • bwb 31 minutes ago

    FB is built on rage bait, what else do they have beside cute videos?

    • code_duck 12 minutes ago

      Horrible sympathy and religion bait like "I bet nobody will upvote this poor sick child with one leg, won't you? 1 amen = 1 prayer!"

  • ThunderSizzle 9 minutes ago

    How is this any different than traditional media? Cable news creates fake problems and controversy constantly, and pay their news anchors well to do so.

    In return, many companies that rely on these problems, turn around and advertise on these networks.

    Social media is just following the same strategy.

    • matherial 4 minutes ago

      What are you trying to say? That Facebook should be excused because others also behave badly?

      Otherwise, we can dislike both things and it adds nothing to say "but why aren't your talking about the other thing instead". And for what it's worth, there is a pretty clear difference between the journalistic standards of FB bait and of the legacy media.

  • cedws 35 minutes ago

    Social media platforms have been paying out for attention seeking behaviour for a long time now. It’s why every YouTube video now has the same lame shocked face, red arrows, and clickbait title. It’s why assholes film themselves intentionally pissing people off for TikTok. It’s a whole category called nuisance tubing.

    I remember during COVID I saw a number of YouTubers swing from producing normal content into conspiracy shit. Their views ballooned. I saw a nasty feedback loop where the more controversial content received more engagement, hence more ad revenue, leading to more of it being produced.

    These platforms are actively degenerating society; there’s a reason the CCP is keeping tight control and reportedly rebalancing things to promote educational creators on China’s.

    • shevy-java 27 minutes ago

      Indeed. What I noticed is that the quality of the videos went down on youtube in the last 3 years. Now, the quality was never as great as it used to be anyway, but Google changed various things that made youtube worse. They are slowly killing off youtube without realising it.

      • Levitating a minute ago

        A lot of channels got bought by private equity. YouTube is saturated with similar content so creators have to resort to clickbait to keep up. AI has allowed creators to increase their efficiency writing scripts.

        I don't know what you believe Google changed about YouTube, but I believe it has just made itself worse.

  • graemep an hour ago

    Ragebait is what FB runs on. A lot of these people do not even believe what they say. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin...

    • miladyincontrol 37 minutes ago

      FB and IG reels both. Twitter gets a lot of rightfully owed criticism about it's fair share but its always weird to me seeing people slam twitter then go right on to IG or some other meta owned app as if its significantly different.

    • lukan 10 minutes ago

      Is it ethical wrong in this case, to wish those persons to get beaten up one day, by one of the people where they fueled their hate (who do take it out on other people for real)? So they reap what they sow?

      • graemep 4 minutes ago

        Understandable but wrong.

  • Growtika an hour ago

    Especially before elections, it feels like they rewards people for being toxic

  • seydor an hour ago

    Can't they just do it with AI ?

  • fergie 37 minutes ago

    The irony here is that ABC is the platfrom doing the rage-baiting.

  • juleiie 4 minutes ago

    When will people learn that rage bait content thrives thanks to people who are so delicate and emotional that they get unhealthily enraged at such content?

    Stop raging on the internet and the rage bait content will disappear overnight.

    Stop buying oil and the climate will get better overnight.

    It’s all on the consumers, contrary to Redditor belief that the big corporations are at fault, it’s simply the matter of demand and thus supply. Not the other way around.

    Take accountability. I know nowadays it is very unpopular to take accountability but this is the first step to make world better place. You can only change your own habits.

  • shevy-java 28 minutes ago

    Now people understand why Suckerberg is called Suckerberg.

    Those greedy billionaires also keep on having ties to right wing nuts. Let's not forget Melon Usk with his suspicious right-arm-raising gestures (having done so twice, which is quite strange when you do the same gesture twice in a row - I mean there can be no doubt about this if you do it twice; twice is an accident?).

  • efilife 39 minutes ago

    Clickbait. Title makes it sound like they pay them directly to promote the platform, but they get paid through facebook content monetisation program

    • chinathrow 36 minutes ago

      Not Clickbait.

      If you provide both:

      a) a service to earn money from content

      b) an algo promoting those videos

      then yes, IMHO they pay them directly for the content produced.

    • myaccountonhn 35 minutes ago

      So they do directly pay them?