Please stop taking the social media engagement bait

The Matildas are woke. Elon Musk is the next coming of Jesus Christ. You should refuse medical help if the ambulance has an LGBTQIA+ flag. BTS sucks. 

If you’ve noticed a rising number of infuriating, frustrating troll posts lately on Twitter — wait, I mean X — there might be a reason.

One of the flagship ideas of Elon Musk’s takeover of the company formerly known as Twitter was introducing “ad revenue sharing” for users who are paying premium members. X Premium, neé Twitter Blue, promises users that they could earn money from the ads displayed on their posts. Last month, the first cohort of (mostly far-right) Twitter power users gleefully shared screenshots of cash payouts that they’d received in return for posting on the platform.

Beyond the complications of the scheme (late payments, it’s only available for people who pay for X, it requires an enormous amount of views that only count from other users who also pay for X) the change has a broader implication for those people who’ve stayed on the platform.

Paying users based on how many eyeballs they get supercharges X’s existing incentive structure for attention at all costs. It’s always been the case that people like former Ashfield councillor-turned-MAGA booster Nick Adams were able to exploit people’s reactions and grow big audiences by posting ridiculous content on then-Twitter. Features on the platform make it easy for people to reshare posts with a statement disagreeing or debunking it but inadvertently boosting the original post to a new audience. Now they’re able to cut out the middleman and earn money directly.

With a system like this, there’s no difference between a view that comes from someone appreciating a thoughtful or funny post and a view that comes from someone gawking at a bizarre, rage-inducing or repulsive take. Given how much more difficult it is to come up with something insightful to say, it actually makes sense to try to cash in on people’s anger or disappointment because the marginal cost of producing a bad take is so low. If you look, you can see users bragging about becoming the target of abuse from online fandoms and celebrating because they know they are cashing in on the attention.

You can even argue there’s a sort of exchange of value between the two parties. The trolled get to share something as part of communicating how they feel or what they believe in, and the troll takes home some cold hard cash. Everyone wins — except for the information ecosystem that is filled out with people baiting and others taking the bait.

The decision to encourage engagement-baiting content goes against the current trend of tech companies moving towards more (what they call) “meaningful conversations”. That’s because the sugar-hit of engagement doesn’t necessarily create a pleasant user experience. Even tiny decisions by tech companies shape how we act on their platforms. One example is how Mark Zuckerberg’s X competitor, Threads, launched without a chronological feed which disincentives timely content like news. 

So, are we just slaves to the machine? Absolutely not. As people who are all cohabiting the same information ecosystem, our behaviours affect others. We can choose to deprive content of oxygen if we like. Giving into temptation and hate-sharing someone’s else content is something that ironically encourages that behaviour in the future — so the inverse is true too. 

Don’t repost unless you’re happy to amplify the content further. If you must, consider screen-shotting rather than just reposting. And always know that people are more than happy to harness your revulsion, shame and disbelief if it means they can earn a buck.