What is Outrage Amplification?
Platforms learned that angry users comment, share, and stay online more, so ranking algorithms tend to promote polarizing and rage-inducing content.
Where it comes from
Algorithmic Social Feeds (2012)
How it hooks you
Exploits emotional contagion: anger spreads faster than other emotions online, and feeds optimize for whatever spreads.
What the research shows
A study of over 500,000 posts found each additional moral-emotional word in a message increased its share rate by roughly 20%.
Source: Brady et al., PNAS (2017)
How to resist it
Notice when content seems designed to make you angry, and step away before engaging.