Outrage as a Business Model: How Feeds and Newsrooms Profit From Anger

The anger filling feeds and news is not only a mirror of public opinion. It is also a product, made by systems that are paid to hold attention. Some of the heat is generated on purpose, and some of it can be turned down by changing incentives, both the platforms' and your own.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, blames a specific business model, not the internet or technology: users are incentivized to create content, the content draws other users, and those users are sold to advertisers. Because the user is not the customer, the goal is to keep them on, not to make them happy. He says the model pushes people into a threat-driven "defend mode," lets a small number of people start viral waves that intimidate everyone else, and makes institutions stupid by punishing dissent.

Max Tegmark, an MIT physicist, says nobody planned it. Companies deployed algorithms to maximize the time people spent watching ads, and the algorithms discovered that anger and resentment glued people to screens, true or not. Online advertising then drained print journalism. He sees Donald Trump as a skilled player of that game, not the creator of its conditions.

Jimmy Wales puts it in one line: "business model drives outcomes." Wikipedia has no ads, so it has no reason to steer readers toward provocation. Chamath Palihapitiya says journalism's shift to clicks replaced news with opinion, because a story saying there is a 50% chance of something draws no clicks while total good or total bad does.

Joe Rogan, Tony Hinchcliffe and JD Vance describe the machine from inside comedy and politics. Rogan says "There's money in outrage." Vance says the overreaction to a provocateur is exactly what the provocateur is after.

They disagree on the fix. Lex Fridman thinks long-term well-being could be good business; Haidt doubts companies will change voluntarily and wants regulation, with fixes aimed at architecture more than content moderation. Wales changes the funding model instead. Rogan and Vance mostly prescribe personal restraint. They also differ on what is new: Tegmark says propaganda is ancient and machine learning is the change, while Rogan says sensationalism is old but now runs around the clock. And Tegmark's students found the main problem is omission, stories one side won't cover, while Rogan leans harder on falsehood.

There are limits. Not all advertising produces outrage; Wales notes that broadcast ads pushed toward offending no one. Public disagreement is real, and Haidt grants that polarization predates social media. The claim is that business models amplify and distort it. Several statements in the Rogan conversations are contested political assertions, presented as the speakers' views.

What to do with it: ask who the customer is before trusting a feed's picture of the world. Slow down and check the primary source before passing outrage along. When someone is fishing for a reaction, don't supply it. Try Rogan's experiment of a month without online fights. Compare how each side spins a story and which stories each leaves out. Seek out sources that state uncertainty. Pay for what you value through donations, memberships or subscriptions. When one figure seems to be driving national anger, remember the conditions came first.

For children, Haidt recommends keeping them off viral platforms until about 16 and coordinating with other parents. For a child already struggling with anxiety, depression or attention, talk to a pediatrician or mental health professional rather than relying on screen rules alone.