Prime Minister Edi Rama has chosen to amplify on social media a critical message about the very logic that keeps these platforms running. In a Facebook post, he shared a video by historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, who argues that algorithms are not built to produce truth, but to drive engagement through the strongest human emotions.
Rama’s post and the message accompanying the video
Rama accompanied the post with the words: “SHORT AND CLEAR ABOUT THE ALGORITHM by Yuval Noah Harari, one of the most farsighted minds of today’s world”.
The post comes at a time when the debate over the impact of social media on public opinion, hate speech and polarization remains heated, even as the platforms continue to present themselves as neutral spaces for communication.
What Harari says about Facebook, X and TikTok
In the video shared by the prime minister, Harari says that the algorithms of platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok have as their main objective increasing user engagement, not building trust nor promoting the truth.
According to him, the term “engagement” itself sounds harmless, but in practice it means continuous experiments on human behavior to understand what keeps people on the platform longer and what pushes them to react more strongly.
Fear, hate and anger as the engine of clicks
Harari argues that the platforms have discovered that the fastest and strongest reaction is achieved by activating fear, hate, anger or greed. According to him, these are the emotions that produce more shares, more comments and more time spent online.
From this perspective, the algorithm does not necessarily reward the most accurate or most useful content, but the content that sparks reaction. This is also why the digital space is often filled with tension, conflict and division.
Warning of a society in a state of hyper-stimulation
Harari links this technological logic to a broader emotional condition in society. He warns that constant exposure to such a high level of stimulation keeps the nervous system in a state of hyperactivity.
According to him, this state may be manageable only temporarily, but not as an everyday norm. In the philosopher’s assessment, a society kept constantly on alert, excited and reactive loses its calm and risks harming itself.
The message Rama chose to share is, in essence, a direct criticism of the way the attention economy on the internet works.
What remains to be seen is whether this reflection will remain simply a social media post, or whether it will be accompanied by a more serious debate on the real impact of platforms on public and political life.