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It seems anytime I try to check out Mastodon it is always some negative political view or affiliation of why X, Y & Z is bad. Is this just what most people like boosting or is it a sign of botting to push negativity over the more positive headlines?
I do understand I can switch to any Mastodon instance I want and stick to a small community, however I like keeping up with trending topics in the world. Maybe the most popular accounts in the Mastodon community likes to rise up pitchforks every minute.
"Drives engagement". Making people angry at shit is a good way to get clicks, so ragebaiting makes up a large part of produced/posted/upvoted material.
There is no algorithm. Clicks don't do shit on mastodon.
The thing is that love and passion also drive engagement. Tech and news companies could have created algos to push content that makes people happy, but they chose not to. Imagine how different life and the internet would be had they chosen the friendlier option.
This is one of the reasons why I think votes and other such nonsense are a detriment to sites like this. (It's also why I've eliminated them from my Lemmy experience.)