Prime Minister Edi Rama has shared a video featuring Israeli professor Yuval Noah Harari discussing the way social media algorithms influence human behaviour.
Harari argues that platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok designed their algorithms to increase user engagement rather than build trust or promote truth.
According to the professor, algorithms have effectively experimented on millions of people to discover how to keep users on platforms longer and encourage them to interact more with content.
Moreover, Harari says that the easiest way to increase engagement is to trigger strong emotions such as hatred, fear, anger and greed. These emotions can capture people’s attention and encourage them to react and share content.
As a result, he argues, society now lives in a “hyper-engaged” world. He links this constant engagement to excitement, which keeps the nervous system at a high level of activity.
However, Harari warns that people are not biologically designed to remain in a highly excited state all the time. Eventually, he says, a constantly stimulated organism breaks down.
Instead, he says he would prefer to meet people who make him feel calm rather than constantly excited. Harari also pointed to American, Israeli and global politics as examples of a world that has become excessively stimulated.
Rama described Harari as “one of the most far-sighted minds of today” and shared his comments on social media.
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