THE leading social media companies, through their various built-in AI scripts, have stumbled upon a gold mine. They found that themes surrounding portraits of hate received greater attention than any other theme. The companies then arranged their profit model around harbingers of hate. They developed complex AI tools and algorithms that predict what is likely to generate rage. So, social media algorithms favour content that keep users engaged longer through provocative content designed simply to trigger an emotional reaction. For these companies, greater engagement translates to greater financial gain.
In January, 2024, CEOs of Meta (Mark Zuckerberg), TikTok (Shou Zi Chew), X (Linda Yaccarino), Snap (Evan Spiegel), and Discord (Jason Citron) were all hauled before the U.S. Senate to answer questions regarding their algorithms. Most of them acknowledged that the companies were aware of it and promised to take steps to monitor extreme views and issue content warnings. However, not a single CEO took responsibility or gave a commitment to reorder their algorithms around more positive life-saving themes.
Many social media users are unaware that there is a grand scheme to target the most fragile and vulnerable instincts of their emotional well-being. You click on Facebook with every intention to express birthday sentiments to a good friend and to peep at the latest pictures posted by a sibling. Two clicks later and —boom—you’re shaking your head, knitting your brows or clenching your jaw at a half‑baked, hate-riddled political rant. How did you summersault from “aww how sweet” to “he can’t be serious” or “who are these jokers,” in under 10 seconds? Social media content creators tend to weaponise your attention and cash in on outrage. It is therefore not strange that users sometimes feel compelled to respond to provocative content.
Guyana is part of this insatiable social media algorithmic diktats. In this country, rage baiting as a tactic to generate outrage is increasingly being employed, particularly by political figures, to attract followers and spread misinformation. They employ inflammatory, attention-grabbing headlines with exaggerated claims in an attempt to spark immediate emotional reaction.
There are others with more notorious instincts, perched overseas and not part of the real local experience. Yet they see it fit to comment on everyday local politics and social dynamics; their stock-in-trade being libellous, racially inciteful statements; fearmongering; alarmist political misinformation and in some cases, outright bullying that quite often violates our cybercrime statutes, content specifically designed to produce outrage. These messengers of hate often claim immunity from Guyanese justice due to foreign residency.
In our political space, every conceivable outrage is directed towards the government. The government has become an easy target because government sources have layers of bureaucracy and fact-checking to go through before information is communicated to the public. On the other hand, everybody with a smart device can adulterate and belch out any accusation they wish.
Lately, the Team Mohameds camp seems to be perfecting the rage-farming art. Even a cursory observer can recognise that after they issue some of the most outrageous and mendacious statements, without fail, it is immediately followed by hundreds of fake accounts sharing the very content. When they do so, they introduce targeted landmine comments, made by hired trolls lurking in the comments section throwing in socially incendiary remarks to keep the conversation heated. This is part of a larger scheme to poison the information space and misdirect people by claiming that legitimate prosecution for criminal behaviour is government persecution.
When it comes to rage-farming and sensationalism, the social media personality that goes by the sobriquet ‘Melly Mel,’ seems to have a potent machinery. Just this week, accounts managed by her released information that is claimed to come from one single teacher in a teaching service that probably exceeds 20,000 and from a single school that is part of a network of over 3,000 schools.
The information claimed that the teacher noticed a change of internet-access equipment at her school, and since the change, she has been unable to access the internet. This information was presented in a way to communicate that the government ordered nationwide restriction or placed a ban on internet access by teachers on the school networks. The natural response to this was rage and accusation that the government wants to revisit the dark ages. Given the orientation of civil society groups and some NGOs operating in Guyana, don’t be surprised if this claim is cited in some international report on lack of internet freedom in Guyana.
Some of these very anti-government mis-informants on the local scene, who are the vilest purveyors of rage-baiting, often sign up with the social media companies to share in viewership revenues and/or appeal for donations and contributions. They derive pecuniary benefits from the rage of others, therefore, that insatiable appetite to create political rage content is not a mistake.