Facebook Is TARGETING New Mothers With This Dangerous Content
(FeaturedNews.com) – A disturbing report from tech publisher Wired tells the story of a new mother’s journey on social media during those long, sleepless nights early in parenting. Kate Knibbs writes that when her mind was just too spent for podcasts or anything of real substance, she turned to simple entertainment such as TikTok videos and Instagram posts. What she found wasn’t what she hoped to see.
New parents search for new parent things and, as such, become a cog in the mechanism of social media algorithms. Along with ads for diapers, baby gadgets, and healthcare tips, Knibbs kept seeing negative posts about sick, dying, and dead children. The more she scrolled, the more she saw them.
Fascist Facebook against New Mothers
Wired: Facebook’s Algorithms Heap Negative Content on New Mothers https://t.co/a24r7Q3mB8— Tina Romano Freda (@TinaTweeker) July 5, 2022
A Washington Post reporter who experienced a similar phenomenon as a new dad explained one of the main reasons these kinds of posts get served to so many new parents: They can’t look away. Algorithms learn not just what users like to see but how long they look, whether or not they turn on the volume, how much they watch, and how often they’ll watch the same content.
So, while Knibbs may have been exposed to more sick kids than she was ready for, her own habits are likely the largest contributing factor to what she sees. Social media companies and their mechanisms understand how to reach people using raw data. Unfortunately, that often leads to negative emotions recognized as desirable habits. The software doesn’t recognize why you watched that clip for a minute longer than usual, just that you did.
Meta’s notorious dragging before Congress to answer for the negative effects its platforms have on people, particularly young girls, is indicative of exactly why, for some people, it might be better to put that phone down for a bit if things get too intense.
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