alt Hacker News>The issue is that the design is meant to stir up outrage and encourage addiction.
I agree, but it's not something exclusive to social platforms. Traditional media do this too, albeit in slightly different technical form. Today there are just too much information offered for consumption, so almost everyone who exploits our attention is incentivized to be manipulative.
Yeah the whole "if it bleeds it leads" mantra has caused a lot of damage to society in its own right too. Almost all the paranoia about crime and terrorism and social collapse for the last 50 or so years has likely stemmed from those things making the headlines in the papers and people assuming that means they're more common than they used to be.
Humans seriously struggle to understand the difference between "more common" and "more documented".
And yes, the media has definitely gotten worse too. Outrage and anger gets attention, so inflammatory content and blatant clickbait run wild online.