How content creators make money from rage-baiting
14:50 Share

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

And never miss an episode.

When you see a really infuriating video on social media, have you ever thought that the person in it could be deliberately winding you up and getting paid for it? It's called rage baiting, making people online angry to generate comments and engagement. And if you can't spot it, it can create really toxic conversations. So today we're going to be talking about the emotional impact of rage baiting and how you can learn to walk away from it if you want to. I'm Hannah Gelbart and this is What In The World from the BBC World Service.

Let's find out more about this now from BBC reporter Megan Lawton. Hi, Megan. Hello. So how would you define rage baiting? Okay, so it's any kind of content that is designed to elicit rage within you. And there's like a high-low scale to this. So it could be something like a tweet or a thread saying this particular artist is overrated.

Then I discovered there's more kookier takes on rage baiting. So I don't know if you've seen those recipe videos on TikTok that are nothing but disgusting. We're talking pureed kippers with licorice-flavored mashed potato, the kind of stuff that no one is going home to their kitchens to recreate. There's also rage baiting. Yeah, I've seen loads of those kind of videos. But you haven't made any of the recipes. I haven't been tempted.

There's also rage bait to grab your attention. So I've seen YouTube podcast titles saying, quote unquote, tax evading freak disgusts me. Then there's particularly we've seen this a lot this year because it's been such a huge election year. There's political rage bait and subversive.

Some say the elections most recently sort of in the US have been light on policy and instead just accusations about candidates. So, you know, candidate A is bad for this, candidate B is bad for this. And the BBC has found that some of the political rage bait that's been circulating falls into the category of misinformation. So false accusations about these candidates, use of deep fakes and AI images. But regardless of the category,

Everything I've just listed is attention grabbing because it often raises something you either disagree with or that enrages you. And the goal can be different with politics. It can be about influencing voters. Sometimes it's just about content creators getting views and in some cases getting money. And why does it really get people going? Why does it work so well?

I spoke with a psychologist who explained historically, we actually need to pay attention to things that threaten us. We almost have these biases hardwired into us. And that kind of translates to now. Studies show we're also more likely to interact with things that make us mad. If we see a sweet kitten on our timeline, we might kind of say, oh, drop a like and scroll on. Whereas imagine you come across a video where someone's saying,

all cats are awful, we need to get rid of them. There's a shock factor there and you're more likely to interact with that video, whether it's watching for longer because you're kind of so outraged but you need to hear more about this or you're going to send it to a friend, you might comment below. And the growth of rage baiting has coincided with major social media platforms paying creators for their content. These creator programs work on the fact that they get likes, they get comments, they get shares.

Talk me through some of the criticisms that people have about rage baiting. Yeah, one of the biggest ones is that it normalizes anger offline. So we know the number of people making rage bait content is pretty low, but the reach of those videos is huge. And sometimes millions see whether it's a video, a tweet, a thread,

And therefore, seeing this anger play out online can normalize us using it offline. In the case of political rage bait, there's also this idea of news fatigue, and some might really kind of enjoy engaging with it. For those who don't, it's kind of overwhelming to be having these big emotions when we're online. And that in turn leads to news avoidance, like actually, I'm just not going to go on

So how else does rage baiting affect social media users from a mental health perspective? With the algorithms now, a lot of the way that we kind of consume content is changing. So perhaps once on Instagram,

Instagram or X, we chose who we followed and therefore our timeline feeds would be full of who we'd chosen to follow. Now that is less the case and the algorithms have changed that you're just kind of being promoted whatever is driving high engagement. So sometimes it's the unpredictability of what's coming your way. I guess some would just say it doesn't make being online an enjoyable experience. Music

Megan mentioned those all-important algorithms. Before we go any further, let's hear more about how they work from BBC tech reporter Tom Gherkin. Everything that you do online, in some way, shape or form, impacts what you see online.

Whether it's buying a video game on a shopping website, making it more likely for that website to recommend you video games in the future. Or whether it's watching a video about turtles, making it more likely for that website to go "Hey, he liked that video about turtles, I'll show him more turtles in the future." And the way it works is it won't just show you turtles, it'll go "Well, he seems to like animals, let's show him animals." And maybe you only engage with the aquatic animals, so it goes "Well, let's show him fish in the future, let's see how he does with that. What about aquariums? What do you think about those?"

The algorithm looks at what other people have watched off the back. They'll say, "Oh, well, this person watched this video and they watched that one. So why don't we try it with this guy too?" And it extrapolates from there and gets wider from there.

If you engage with that in some particular way, wow, it's even more likely to be recommended to you. It doesn't really matter how you engage with it. If you saw a post on a social media website, you looked at it and it made you frustrated and you replied to that person saying, you're a fool, everything you're saying is wrong, very angry kind of response. Well, you'd actually be more likely to see posts like that in the future because the algorithm...

the technology that runs the show and determines what you see. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mind. It doesn't care whether you're angry, whether you're happy. All it knows is you saw that post and you engaged with it in some form. That means it's going to show you more posts like that in the future. And it can create this bizarre cycle where people see things they don't like, angrily reply to them, and they end up seeing even more things.

things they don't like. And that can be quite a significant problem, which some people are actually facing right now with social media platforms. So what some are doing, like Instagram is introducing something, and TikTok already does this, allowing you to completely refresh your algorithm, completely refresh, make it seem as if you're a new user. In some instances, you say, well, I don't want to see more things like this. You might still end up seeing them,

That tends to be because of the people that you're actually following on these platforms. And that can all be a bit self-fulfilling as well. Let's go back to that example. You see a post you don't like, you're frustrated, you type about it. You see someone else reply who agrees with you. Well, you like their post, you might follow them back, right?

After a period of time, you've ended up following a bunch of people who are replying to that kind of post you don't like. So you're seeing their replies and by virtue, the posts you probably don't actually want to see. One of the other things that the algorithm does, it's not just serving you things it thinks you're more likely to interact with. It's also serving you things which are plainly popular because of course, there's so many things you might be likely to interact with.

It has to rank them based on how popular they are. That's one of the things that's often used. So if you see something, often it might be trying to almost encourage you to interact with it. It might be trying to force you, trick you to leave that frustrated comment because then it'll become more prominent and more people will leave those types of comments and it will get more engagement. And for some people...

all they're looking for is more engagement. More engagement means more followers. It means more celebrity, more fame. And of course, it means more money. So what do content creators have to say about rage baiting? Let's go back to my chat with Megan. As part of the programme I've made for the BBC, I spoke with a content creator called Winter Zesu. And she would say she's a sort of a comedian on TikTok. Yeah.

And her content could very much fall into the category of rage bait for some. And she parodies being the prettiest girl in New York. I feel like it was an accident. So I posted this video was like a five second video, I think. And there were so many people having opinions. And that was the first idea that I got. I'm like, OK, so.

Literally, just if people get mad or if people see something going on in the video, the video is going to go viral. And like it's engagement. I get a lot of like, oh, you're not the prettiest girl in the restaurant. Or please like bring yourself like down. Like you have too much confidence. She would say, you know what, she's just having fun. And like comedy has always been a bit provocative. And then I guess the difference between just having fun with it and the sort of other end of the spectrum where you're spreading hate.

and misinformation, like that is manipulative, I guess it's intentional, and using it to divide people for political gain without being transparent about it. There's definitely questions about how helpful or ethical those kind of contributions are when you're seeping to divide people with information that's often not true. A colleague of ours, Mariana Spring, I've been speaking to her recently, and she's been looking at particularly political rage baiting on X.

I was tracking down some of the people who are part of these networks of accounts on X, so groups of accounts on X that are mainly political, so they're supportive of...

one of the presidential candidates, whether that's Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. And what these accounts have been doing is putting out lots and lots of posts multiple times a day and resharing each other's posts. Some of those posts are true, but some of them are misleading. There are AI generated images. There are unfounded conspiracy theories and some stuff that is just categorically not true. And what

I discovered from talking to a whole range of these people messaging them back and forth was that actually some of the accounts sharing this kind of content are making thousands of dollars they say and I think that raises really important questions about the way that X in particular as a social media site could be incentivizing people to post this kind of content. Megan what

What role do the social media platforms themselves have in this? What did they say about rage baiting? So they have a huge role in it because ultimately their platforms decide what kind of content is allowed. And also they have the power with their chosen algorithms to choose what they're promoting.

I've reached out to YouTube, X, TikTok, Instagram and Threads. No one has responded. But interestingly, Meta executive Adam Masseri recently was speaking about Meta's newest social media platform, Threads. And he says we've seen an increase in engagement baits, which is another term for rage baits.

And we're working to get it under control. Now, that's quite light in detail, but it's interesting to hear they are aware of it. And by the sounds of it, they're not thinking of it favorably. And are they aware of how their platforms just provide an opportunity for people to make money by creating this provocative content?

I guess so. I wouldn't know that without them kind of responding to me, but they'll definitely be aware that this happens on their platforms and that creators, especially with the new creator funds, they're kind of releasing that reward creators in terms of the engagement, the likes, the views. They'll be able to kind of create policies that say we don't want this kind of content being amplified by our algorithms. And the very fact they're not stopping it, I guess they're aware it's happening, but they're not trying to clamp down on it.

So how much money can you make from making people angry on social media? So there unfortunately is big money to be made. And that content creator I mentioned earlier, Winter Zesu, she's 24 and she's living the dream in New York City. Last year, she earned $150,000 US dollars across TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, through her views and engagement time and the thousands of comments she gets.

Now she's working with brands like Netflix and Amazon who are getting her to come to their red carpet events so she can make content there. And so for users, people like you and me, when we're just scrolling on our phones at the end of a long day, are there any things that we might be able to notice to be able to spot that something is rage baiting? First and foremost, it's how is this video making me feel? How is this content making me feel? And if you do feel outraged, you do feel anger, then

In that moment, it's about distancing yourself from the emotion and kind of thinking, why do I feel strongly about this? And actually, okay, why has this person shared it and what could their motive be? A lot of people I've spoken to about rage baiting has said that if we want to avoid it, we need to have a better understanding about

media literacy. So understanding why certain videos are popping up on our feeds and understanding why algorithms push out certain posts or certain content creators are making a certain type of content. What are they trying to achieve within that?

So is there any advice about engaging, commenting or not commenting? Yeah, if you don't like something, the best thing you can do is just scroll on. The kind of less you interact with a video you don't like, the less kind of lifespan that video might have afterwards. What about examples that are spreading things like misinformation, disinformation or online hate against a certain group of people, the more toxic stuff?

All of these platforms will have a way that you can report this content. Really interesting that the platforms know it's happening. Some are beginning to identify it as an issue. And meanwhile, all of us out here, we're just falling into the trap. We're sometimes falling into the trap. Other times we're just watching absolutely bonkers cooking videos. There's such a high, low scale of it. So it's hard to say that all race voting is bad. But yeah, there's definitely videos to watch out for. Megan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

That is it for today's episode. If you liked what we've been talking about, we have done loads more on tech, social media, all kinds of other topics. Like we recently talked about why Russia has fined Google more than all the money in the world. And we've got an episode on whether Africa will be the next big player in esports and pro gaming. You can find all of those wherever you get your BBC podcasts and also on the BBC World Service YouTube channel. Thank you for joining us for this episode of What In The World from the BBC World Service.

I'm Hannah Gelbott, and I'll be back with another episode soon. See you then. Bye.

And never miss an episode.