X: Why users see toxic content on social media – Elon Musk

Billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk has opened up on why social media users see toxic contents on the microblogging platform.

Musk disclosed that the algorithm of X is programmed in a way that when users interact with a content, it implies they want to see more of such contents or related contents frequently.

“I was just with some friends who were saying that their feed had become more toxic lately. Turns out they had been sharing examples of toxic posts with each other, which makes the algorithm think you love toxic posts.

“The X algorithm assumes that if you interact with content, you want to see more of that content. One of the strongest signals is if you forward 𝕏 posts to friends, it assumes you like that content a lot, because it takes effort to forward.

“Unfortunately, if the actual reason you forwarded the content to friends was because you were outraged by it, we are currently not smart enough to realize that,” he said.

To regularly see nice contents, users are reminded to regularly share nice posts with friends and family so their feeds does not become toxic.

Meanwhile, reports have shown that people are 49% more likely to read something negative than positive. Most of those aged 17 and over have a tendency to gravitate toward negative information while disregarding positive one.

Reports show that 49% of people will rather read something negative, which lends weight to negative articles statistics.

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