why i hate facebook argumentative essay

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Pros and Cons of Social Media: Analysis of Facebook

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Published: Mar 18, 2021

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Farhad Manjoo

OK, but What Should We Actually Do About Facebook? I Asked the Experts.

By Farhad Manjoo

Opinion Columnist

One of the most unsettling revelations in the cache of internal documents leaked by the former Facebook employee Frances Haugen has been just how little we know about Facebook, and consequently how unprepared our political culture is to do anything about it, whatever it is.

That’s the first problem in fixing Facebook — there isn’t much agreement about what, exactly, the problem with Facebook is. The left says it’s Facebook’s amplification of hate, extremism and misinformation about, among other things, vaccines and the last presidential election. President Biden put it bluntly this summer: “They’re killing people.”

Former President Donald Trump and others on the right say the opposite: Social media giants are run by liberals bent on silencing opposing views. In a statement last week, Trump called Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder, “a criminal” who altered “the course of a Presidential Election.”

Beyond concerns about the distortion of domestic politics, there are a number of other questions about Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — all of which, Zuckerberg announced last week, are now under a new corporate umbrella called Meta . Is Instagram contributing to anxiety and body-shaming among teenagers? Are Facebook’s outrage-juicing algorithms destabilizing developing countries, where the company employs fewer resources to monitor its platform than it does in its large markets? Is Facebook perpetuating racism through biased algorithms? Is it the cause of global polarization, splitting societies into uncooperative in-groups?

Inherent in these concerns is a broader worry — Facebook’s alarming power. The company is among the largest collectors of humanity’s most private information, one of the planet’s most-trafficked sources of news, and it seems to possess the ability, in some degree, to alter public discourse. Worse, essentially all of Facebook’s power is vested in Zuckerberg alone. This feels intolerable; as the philosopher Kanye West put it, “No one man should have all that power.”

So, what to do about all this? In the past few days I asked more than a dozen experts this question. Here are some of their top ideas, and what I think about them.

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Why I Hate Facebook

Facebook isn't as popular as it used to be, especially among teens .

And I'm really not surprised.

From random friend requests to a slew of invitations to play farming games, Facebook is getting to be more trouble than it's worth. 

Yes, I'm still on Facebook, but I don't use it nearly as much as I have in the past. And it's mostly because of how the social network has evolved and what people do on it. 

Perception is reality: Facebook can't just exist, it needs to be liked. The experience of being on Facebook needs to be enjoyable. There is no law that says established social networking sites must always stay in business, forever. Consider MySpace, for instance. What users think of Facebook is, therefore, crucial.

So Facebook, it's not me, it's really you. 

There's way too much sponsored content.

It seems that every time I visit Facebook, there's a sponsored post that is prominently placed at the top of my news feed. And that seems to be because Facebook is now replacing free content with paid content, Nick Bilton of The New York Times recently reported . 

People can see when you've read their messages.

Similar to iMessage, it's possible to see when someone has read your messages on Facebook. But this is slightly problematic because it essentially forces you to respond on the spot, and if you don't, it can lead to some very awkward encounters. 

Graph Search is kind of creepy.

With Graph Search, you can search for queries like, "friends of friends who are single and live in New York." Useful? Sure. Creepy? A little bit.

All of the information found in Graph Search is already accessible on the social network, but Graph Search takes away all of the manual labor that was once required to harvest such information.

And just imagine what would happen if Facebook opens up the search to more than just friends of friends? Anyone would be able to find out essentially anything about you, pending your privacy settings. 

There are way too many games that spam you.

In any given day, I'll receive anywhere from one to 10 invitations to play games. Sure, it is possible to block invites for specific games, as well as invites from specific friends. But with more apps and games making their way onto Facebook, there should be a way to easily block all of them. Though, it's unlikely Facebook will ever do that given the potential effects a blocking all apps feature could have on its revenue. 

Even your "friends" spam you.

Thanks to the tagging feature, friends can say they were with you, even if it's totally not true. When someone tags you and other people in a post, they can easily put their content on several different Timelines without needing to manually post on each individual one. Next thing you know, your Timeline has effectively turned into one big advertisement. 

Facebook keeps changing its privacy settings.

It seems that every time we get used to the current privacy settings on Facebook, it decides to switch things up.

We all know by now that Facebook shares your personal information (anonymously) with advertisers so that they can effectively target you. But Facebook has tended to change its privacy settings in a way that requires you to opt out if you want to keep your privacy.

It gets in the way of real-life relationships.

It's unbelievable how many times Facebook has put a damper on in-person social situations. It seems that people are very quick to grab their phone and open up Facebook at the mere risk of having an awkward silence.

There's too much oversharing of uninteresting content. Facebook just isn't exciting anymore.

As much as I adore my friends and family who use Facebook, some things would be better kept to themselves. Not everything your cat, or baby, does is amazing. Sure, scientists have shown that posting to social media sites releases dopamine, and therefore gives us pleasure. But at what cost? 

It can ruin your life if you take it too seriously.

Many people have reported feeling bad or jealous while looking at Facebook,  according to a recent survey . Even more, some people have reportedly used it for malicious purposes. Last year , a teenager committed suicide. In her suicide note, she mentioned how some comments she read on Facebook contributed to her feeling upset. 

This isn't Facebook's fault. And it's important to mention that the social network partnered with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline back in 2011 to help prevent suicides. 

People from work want to be friends.

When Facebook first launched, it was all about connecting with friends. But something has seemingly changed. I have received way more friend requests from people whom I've met at business-related events or currently work with. There's always a part of me that doesn't want to accept, but then I worry that declining the request would ruin my professional relationship with these people. On the other hand, accepting the request could have the same, if not worse effect. 

Interested in learning more about Facebook?

Some Of Facebook's Best Features Were Once Hackathon Projects >

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• How to write an argumentative essay | Examples & tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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Table of contents

When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

• Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
• Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
• Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
• Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
• Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
• Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

• Make a claim
• Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
• Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
• Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

• Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
• Cite data to support your claim
• Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
• Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

• Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
• Highlight the problems with this position
• Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
• Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

• Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
• Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
• Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
• Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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Facebook Essay

To make this Facebook essay easy to understand for any reader, the author will start with terminology.

Facebook is among the most popular social media networking sites today. It is popular due to its multiple applications and the ease of communication it offers to the user. It allows people to share pictures, events and statuses on a single platform.

Facebook has several benefits, such as forming groups, chatting with friends and finding information on multiple topics. The platform is also highly informative due to the multiple pages on a host of topics, including but not limited to health, education, science, exercise, etc. It is also perfect for keeping in touch with relatives and friends who can stay connected to a single platform.

Below, this essay about Facebook will dive deeper into the platform’s advantages and how it can help kids, students, and adults communicate.

More recently, mobile companies have enabled users to connect to Facebook through their phones. Mobile phone technology such as GPRS now allows users to access Facebook from any location. This feature has made Facebook extremely popular among today’s generation.

Staying connected has never been so simple and effective than it is on Facebook. Talking to friends and relatives or family members is now possible with a single Facebook account which is a perfect platform to chat and communicate.

A more recent addition to the online chat program is the video calling feature which has gained immense popularity. Not only can one talk to people but also see them live with the help of this video chat feature.

Individuals no longer have to yearn to keep in touch with their friends and dear ones. A single Facebook account enables users to achieve several functions all at once.

Another very important feature of Facebook is the online gaming portal which it offers to its users. There are hundreds of thousands of games on Facebook which one can play at any given time. The interesting aspect is the ability to play these games with friends.

There are multiple games like Poker, Diamond Dash, Zuma, Farm Heroes Sage and others on Facebook.

Playing these games is a unique and special experience since it allows users to interact with friends and engage in healthy competition. There are no additional costs and users can play games absolutely free of cost.

Facebook is becoming a highly successful platform not only for making new friends and finding old ones, but for accessing global and local news as well. Most of the news and media companies have launched their Facebook pages.

This feature has added the extra benefit to Facebook, making it educational and purposeful. Besides being a medium to interact and communicate, Facebook has become a marketing platform for many popular brands. Today, one can easily access all the famous global brands on Facebook.

Several small time businesses have become successful on Facebook. People, who do not have the capital to open a store, have launched their products on Facebook, gaining financial success and recognition.

One can buy practically anything on Facebook from shoes, bags, accessories, clothes, phones, laptops, electronic etc. Many of these online stores offer the facility to make online payments and deliver goods to the buyer’s home.

Thus, through Facebook, people can engage in a host of activities such as playing games, interacting with friends, chatting, video conferencing, marketing, buying, selling and numerous others. Facebook is no longer only a social networking site to stay connected with friends and family.

It has become a platform with online marketing options for the users. When used responsibly, Facebook is an excellent medium for several purposes with extremely low cost and high benefits to the users.

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Evaluating Author Arguments and Claims Worksheets

Related ela standard: ri.7.8.

When you are critically evaluating the work of an author you will be required to do some research. This can be done several different ways. If an author cites the work of anyone else to validate their claim, it is pretty easy. View the source that cited and first makes sure it an established authority on the subject and review their work. If the author doesn’t use a source, you should hit the references available to you and find the means to validate it. These worksheets will have students evaluate the work of various authors and look for a means to validate their claims.

Evaluating Arguments and Claims Worksheets To Print:

The Smart Snacking Choice – Time for us to bash processed foods.

To Buy or to Lease? – The author isn't big on leasing cars.

Why I Hate Facebook – This author goes as far to say that social networking can cause you physical harm.

Is Eating Grass Bad for My Dog? – It is definitely harmful to the carpets in my home.

Deconstructing Arguments – You basically trying to outline the author's thoughts.

Get Rich Slowly – Which of the choice arguments does the author make?

Roger's Rabbit – Are the sources of Roger's information appropriate and credible, given his argument? Why or why not?

Author Arguments – Complete the activity below to trace and evaluate the author's argument.

Argument Analysis – There's an old saying: Don't believe everything you read. Read the assigned text.

Is the Argument Sound? – What are the author's reasons? What appeals does the author make to convince the reader?

Following the Tracks – Complete the activity below for the assigned text to trace and evaluate the author's argument.

The Power of Books – Are the author's examples credible? Why? Choose all that apply.

Tracing an Author's Argument – What is the author's claim?

What Do You Think? Evaluating an Argument – You can use this for basically any form of media or literature.

Should You Juice? – The author basically encourages you just to try it.

How Can Authors Validate Their Arguments and Claims?

It is easy for any writer to make a claim but a writer's real job is to provide evidence for that claim. Arguments without any supportive evidence are worthless. To convey his work convincingly to the audience, the writer is bound to provide valid proves of his claim. Selection of a right argument and evidence is essential for the validity and reliability of the claim. To prove his claim, a writer should keep the following points in mind:

Works of Experts

One of the most effective ways to validate a claim is to register scholarly works in the paper. Adding citation of a recognized journal increases the reliability of an author's claim. Use of secondary research is salient to build a dependable claim. If a writer makes a certain claim, then it is the duty of the writer to brace his argument by adding evidence from the known researcher's work. The strength of the claim is based on the quality of scholarly research that is used as secondary research. The author should use a reliable and trust-worthy source of a recognized researcher.

Include Statistics

A writer can also enhance the validity of his work by incorporating reports, surveys, scholarly articles and literature review. For the authenticity of a claim, the writer needs to add numbers and figures in his work. Moreover, the addition of numbers is crucial for the accuracy of the claim.

Reach a Conclusion

One sign of a valid argument is that it always gets to a conclusion. The writer should reach a conclusion after making a strong claim. The conclusion will work as proof and assures that the writer's argument is valid and genuine. It is not necessary that the conclusion is true always but the conclusion that the writer's claim is not ambiguous.

How to Evaluate Claims in a Text

The main purpose of an author to write is to deliver personal ideas to the world. The author usually wants to spread his message and evaluations to the readers through the text. In the process of doing so, the author uses a lot of evidence from the research and work of others. The evaluation of these claims is important. You can evaluate the claims with the help of following tips.

Identify the Author's Purpose

The first step towards evaluating claims in a text is to identify the author's purpose of writing. You need to understand thoroughly why the author wrote the piece. You have to determine the motivation behind the writing. You can research a little on the author's background to find out the reputation he/she holds and what things define the author. It will give you a lot of insight into the text as well.

Determine The Rhetoric Reasoning

Once you have understood the purpose of the author's writing, it is time to give it a thorough read. When you are done reading and comprehending the text, you can start looking for the rhetoric reasoning for evaluation. The rhetoric reasoning means all the claims and evidence that are logical, credible, and give some sort of emotions. These claims are true and have credible sources. If you have determined the rhetoric reasoning in the text, then it is evident that the claims are authentic and logical.

Determine the Fallacious Reasoning

It is also possible for the authors to use fallacious reasoning sometimes. This mostly happens when the author is desperate to make the argument strong and credible. With thorough research and mindful reading, you can easily identify the fallacious reasoning. It will help you a lot in evaluating the claims.

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How to Write an A+ Argumentative Essay

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You'll no doubt have to write a number of argumentative essays in both high school and college, but what, exactly, is an argumentative essay and how do you write the best one possible? Let's take a look.

A great argumentative essay always combines the same basic elements: approaching an argument from a rational perspective, researching sources, supporting your claims using facts rather than opinion, and articulating your reasoning into the most cogent and reasoned points. Argumentative essays are great building blocks for all sorts of research and rhetoric, so your teachers will expect you to master the technique before long.

But if this sounds daunting, never fear! We'll show how an argumentative essay differs from other kinds of papers, how to research and write them, how to pick an argumentative essay topic, and where to find example essays. So let's get started.

What Is an Argumentative Essay? How Is it Different from Other Kinds of Essays?

There are two basic requirements for any and all essays: to state a claim (a thesis statement) and to support that claim with evidence.

Though every essay is founded on these two ideas, there are several different types of essays, differentiated by the style of the writing, how the writer presents the thesis, and the types of evidence used to support the thesis statement.

Essays can be roughly divided into four different types:

#1: Argumentative #2: Persuasive #3: Expository #4: Analytical

So let's look at each type and what the differences are between them before we focus the rest of our time to argumentative essays.

Argumentative Essay

Argumentative essays are what this article is all about, so let's talk about them first.

An argumentative essay attempts to convince a reader to agree with a particular argument (the writer's thesis statement). The writer takes a firm stand one way or another on a topic and then uses hard evidence to support that stance.

An argumentative essay seeks to prove to the reader that one argument —the writer's argument— is the factually and logically correct one. This means that an argumentative essay must use only evidence-based support to back up a claim , rather than emotional or philosophical reasoning (which is often allowed in other types of essays). Thus, an argumentative essay has a burden of substantiated proof and sources , whereas some other types of essays (namely persuasive essays) do not.

You can write an argumentative essay on any topic, so long as there's room for argument. Generally, you can use the same topics for both a persuasive essay or an argumentative one, so long as you support the argumentative essay with hard evidence.

Example topics of an argumentative essay:

• "Should farmers be allowed to shoot wolves if those wolves injure or kill farm animals?"
• "Should the drinking age be lowered in the United States?"
• "Are alternatives to democracy effective and/or feasible to implement?"

The next three types of essays are not argumentative essays, but you may have written them in school. We're going to cover them so you know what not to do for your argumentative essay.

Persuasive Essay

Persuasive essays are similar to argumentative essays, so it can be easy to get them confused. But knowing what makes an argumentative essay different than a persuasive essay can often mean the difference between an excellent grade and an average one.

Persuasive essays seek to persuade a reader to agree with the point of view of the writer, whether that point of view is based on factual evidence or not. The writer has much more flexibility in the evidence they can use, with the ability to use moral, cultural, or opinion-based reasoning as well as factual reasoning to persuade the reader to agree the writer's side of a given issue.

Instead of being forced to use "pure" reason as one would in an argumentative essay, the writer of a persuasive essay can manipulate or appeal to the reader's emotions. So long as the writer attempts to steer the readers into agreeing with the thesis statement, the writer doesn't necessarily need hard evidence in favor of the argument.

Often, you can use the same topics for both a persuasive essay or an argumentative one—the difference is all in the approach and the evidence you present.

Example topics of a persuasive essay:

• "Should children be responsible for their parents' debts?"
• "Should cheating on a test be automatic grounds for expulsion?"
• "How much should sports leagues be held accountable for player injuries and the long-term consequences of those injuries?"

Expository Essay

An expository essay is typically a short essay in which the writer explains an idea, issue, or theme , or discusses the history of a person, place, or idea.

This is typically a fact-forward essay with little argument or opinion one way or the other.

Example topics of an expository essay:

• "The History of the Philadelphia Liberty Bell"
• "The Reasons I Always Wanted to be a Doctor"
• "The Meaning Behind the Colloquialism ‘People in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones'"

Analytical Essay

An analytical essay seeks to delve into the deeper meaning of a text or work of art, or unpack a complicated idea . These kinds of essays closely interpret a source and look into its meaning by analyzing it at both a macro and micro level.

This type of analysis can be augmented by historical context or other expert or widely-regarded opinions on the subject, but is mainly supported directly through the original source (the piece or art or text being analyzed) .

Example topics of an analytical essay:

• "Victory Gin in Place of Water: The Symbolism Behind Gin as the Only Potable Substance in George Orwell's 1984"
• "Amarna Period Art: The Meaning Behind the Shift from Rigid to Fluid Poses"
• "Adultery During WWII, as Told Through a Series of Letters to and from Soldiers"

There are many different types of essay and, over time, you'll be able to master them all.

A Typical Argumentative Essay Assignment

The average argumentative essay is between three to five pages, and will require at least three or four separate sources with which to back your claims . As for the essay topic , you'll most often be asked to write an argumentative essay in an English class on a "general" topic of your choice, ranging the gamut from science, to history, to literature.

But while the topics of an argumentative essay can span several different fields, the structure of an argumentative essay is always the same: you must support a claim—a claim that can reasonably have multiple sides—using multiple sources and using a standard essay format (which we'll talk about later on).

This is why many argumentative essay topics begin with the word "should," as in:

• "Should all students be required to learn chemistry in high school?"
• "Should children be required to learn a second language?"
• "Should schools or governments be allowed to ban books?"

These topics all have at least two sides of the argument: Yes or no. And you must support the side you choose with evidence as to why your side is the correct one.

But there are also plenty of other ways to frame an argumentative essay as well:

• "Does using social media do more to benefit or harm people?"
• "Does the legal status of artwork or its creators—graffiti and vandalism, pirated media, a creator who's in jail—have an impact on the art itself?"
• "Is or should anyone ever be ‘above the law?'"

Though these are worded differently than the first three, you're still essentially forced to pick between two sides of an issue: yes or no, for or against, benefit or detriment. Though your argument might not fall entirely into one side of the divide or another—for instance, you could claim that social media has positively impacted some aspects of modern life while being a detriment to others—your essay should still support one side of the argument above all. Your final stance would be that overall , social media is beneficial or overall , social media is harmful.

If your argument is one that is mostly text-based or backed by a single source (e.g., "How does Salinger show that Holden Caulfield is an unreliable narrator?" or "Does Gatsby personify the American Dream?"), then it's an analytical essay, rather than an argumentative essay. An argumentative essay will always be focused on more general topics so that you can use multiple sources to back up your claims.

Good Argumentative Essay Topics

So you know the basic idea behind an argumentative essay, but what topic should you write about?

Again, almost always, you'll be asked to write an argumentative essay on a free topic of your choice, or you'll be asked to select between a few given topics . If you're given complete free reign of topics, then it'll be up to you to find an essay topic that no only appeals to you, but that you can turn into an A+ argumentative essay.

What makes a "good" argumentative essay topic depends on both the subject matter and your personal interest —it can be hard to give your best effort on something that bores you to tears! But it can also be near impossible to write an argumentative essay on a topic that has no room for debate.

As we said earlier, a good argumentative essay topic will be one that has the potential to reasonably go in at least two directions—for or against, yes or no, and why . For example, it's pretty hard to write an argumentative essay on whether or not people should be allowed to murder one another—not a whole lot of debate there for most people!—but writing an essay for or against the death penalty has a lot more wiggle room for evidence and argument.

A good topic is also one that can be substantiated through hard evidence and relevant sources . So be sure to pick a topic that other people have studied (or at least studied elements of) so that you can use their data in your argument. For example, if you're arguing that it should be mandatory for all middle school children to play a sport, you might have to apply smaller scientific data points to the larger picture you're trying to justify. There are probably several studies you could cite on the benefits of physical activity and the positive effect structure and teamwork has on young minds, but there's probably no study you could use where a group of scientists put all middle-schoolers in one jurisdiction into a mandatory sports program (since that's probably never happened). So long as your evidence is relevant to your point and you can extrapolate from it to form a larger whole, you can use it as a part of your resource material.

And if you need ideas on where to get started, or just want to see sample argumentative essay topics, then check out these links for hundreds of potential argumentative essay topics.

101 Persuasive (or Argumentative) Essay and Speech Topics

301 Prompts for Argumentative Writing

Top 50 Ideas for Argumentative/Persuasive Essay Writing

[Note: some of these say "persuasive essay topics," but just remember that the same topic can often be used for both a persuasive essay and an argumentative essay; the difference is in your writing style and the evidence you use to support your claims.]

KO! Find that one argumentative essay topic you can absolutely conquer.

Argumentative Essay Format

Argumentative Essays are composed of four main elements:

• A position (your argument)
• Your reasons
• Supporting evidence for those reasons (from reliable sources)
• Counterargument(s) (possible opposing arguments and reasons why those arguments are incorrect)

If you're familiar with essay writing in general, then you're also probably familiar with the five paragraph essay structure . This structure is a simple tool to show how one outlines an essay and breaks it down into its component parts, although it can be expanded into as many paragraphs as you want beyond the core five.

The standard argumentative essay is often 3-5 pages, which will usually mean a lot more than five paragraphs, but your overall structure will look the same as a much shorter essay.

An argumentative essay at its simplest structure will look like:

Paragraph 1: Intro

• Set up the story/problem/issue
• Thesis/claim

Paragraph 2: Support

• Reason #1 claim is correct
• Supporting evidence with sources

Paragraph 3: Support

• Reason #2 claim is correct

Paragraph 4: Counterargument

• Explanation of argument for the other side
• Refutation of opposing argument with supporting evidence

Paragraph 5: Conclusion

• Re-state claim
• Sum up reasons and support of claim from the essay to prove claim is correct

Now let's unpack each of these paragraph types to see how they work (with examples!), what goes into them, and why.

Paragraph 1—Set Up and Claim

Your first task is to introduce the reader to the topic at hand so they'll be prepared for your claim. Give a little background information, set the scene, and give the reader some stakes so that they care about the issue you're going to discuss.

Next, you absolutely must have a position on an argument and make that position clear to the readers. It's not an argumentative essay unless you're arguing for a specific claim, and this claim will be your thesis statement.

Your thesis CANNOT be a mere statement of fact (e.g., "Washington DC is the capital of the United States"). Your thesis must instead be an opinion which can be backed up with evidence and has the potential to be argued against (e.g., "New York should be the capital of the United States").

Paragraphs 2 and 3—Your Evidence

These are your body paragraphs in which you give the reasons why your argument is the best one and back up this reasoning with concrete evidence .

The argument supporting the thesis of an argumentative essay should be one that can be supported by facts and evidence, rather than personal opinion or cultural or religious mores.

For example, if you're arguing that New York should be the new capital of the US, you would have to back up that fact by discussing the factual contrasts between New York and DC in terms of location, population, revenue, and laws. You would then have to talk about the precedents for what makes for a good capital city and why New York fits the bill more than DC does.

Your argument can't simply be that a lot of people think New York is the best city ever and that you agree.

In addition to using concrete evidence, you always want to keep the tone of your essay passionate, but impersonal . Even though you're writing your argument from a single opinion, don't use first person language—"I think," "I feel," "I believe,"—to present your claims. Doing so is repetitive, since by writing the essay you're already telling the audience what you feel, and using first person language weakens your writing voice.

For example,

"I think that Washington DC is no longer suited to be the capital city of the United States."

"Washington DC is no longer suited to be the capital city of the United States."

The second statement sounds far stronger and more analytical.

Paragraph 4—Argument for the Other Side and Refutation

Even without a counter argument, you can make a pretty persuasive claim, but a counterargument will round out your essay into one that is much more persuasive and substantial.

By anticipating an argument against your claim and taking the initiative to counter it, you're allowing yourself to get ahead of the game. This way, you show that you've given great thought to all sides of the issue before choosing your position, and you demonstrate in multiple ways how yours is the more reasoned and supported side.

Paragraph 5—Conclusion

This paragraph is where you re-state your argument and summarize why it's the best claim.

Briefly touch on your supporting evidence and voila! A finished argumentative essay.

Your essay should have just as awesome a skeleton as this plesiosaur does. (In other words: a ridiculously awesome skeleton)

Argumentative Essay Example: 5-Paragraph Style

It always helps to have an example to learn from. I've written a full 5-paragraph argumentative essay here. Look at how I state my thesis in paragraph 1, give supporting evidence in paragraphs 2 and 3, address a counterargument in paragraph 4, and conclude in paragraph 5.

Topic: Is it possible to maintain conflicting loyalties?

Paragraph 1

It is almost impossible to go through life without encountering a situation where your loyalties to different people or causes come into conflict with each other. Maybe you have a loving relationship with your sister, but she disagrees with your decision to join the army, or you find yourself torn between your cultural beliefs and your scientific ones. These conflicting loyalties can often be maintained for a time, but as examples from both history and psychological theory illustrate, sooner or later, people have to make a choice between competing loyalties, as no one can maintain a conflicting loyalty or belief system forever.

The first two sentences set the scene and give some hypothetical examples and stakes for the reader to care about.

The third sentence finishes off the intro with the thesis statement, making very clear how the author stands on the issue ("people have to make a choice between competing loyalties, as no one can maintain a conflicting loyalty or belief system forever." )

Paragraphs 2 and 3

Psychological theory states that human beings are not equipped to maintain conflicting loyalties indefinitely and that attempting to do so leads to a state called "cognitive dissonance." Cognitive dissonance theory is the psychological idea that people undergo tremendous mental stress or anxiety when holding contradictory beliefs, values, or loyalties (Festinger, 1957). Even if human beings initially hold a conflicting loyalty, they will do their best to find a mental equilibrium by making a choice between those loyalties—stay stalwart to a belief system or change their beliefs. One of the earliest formal examples of cognitive dissonance theory comes from Leon Festinger's When Prophesy Fails . Members of an apocalyptic cult are told that the end of the world will occur on a specific date and that they alone will be spared the Earth's destruction. When that day comes and goes with no apocalypse, the cult members face a cognitive dissonance between what they see and what they've been led to believe (Festinger, 1956). Some choose to believe that the cult's beliefs are still correct, but that the Earth was simply spared from destruction by mercy, while others choose to believe that they were lied to and that the cult was fraudulent all along. Both beliefs cannot be correct at the same time, and so the cult members are forced to make their choice.

But even when conflicting loyalties can lead to potentially physical, rather than just mental, consequences, people will always make a choice to fall on one side or other of a dividing line. Take, for instance, Nicolaus Copernicus, a man born and raised in Catholic Poland (and educated in Catholic Italy). Though the Catholic church dictated specific scientific teachings, Copernicus' loyalty to his own observations and scientific evidence won out over his loyalty to his country's government and belief system. When he published his heliocentric model of the solar system--in opposition to the geocentric model that had been widely accepted for hundreds of years (Hannam, 2011)-- Copernicus was making a choice between his loyalties. In an attempt t o maintain his fealty both to the established system and to what he believed, h e sat on his findings for a number of years (Fantoli, 1994). But, ultimately, Copernicus made the choice to side with his beliefs and observations above all and published his work for the world to see (even though, in doing so, he risked both his reputation and personal freedoms).

These two paragraphs provide the reasons why the author supports the main argument and uses substantiated sources to back those reasons.

The paragraph on cognitive dissonance theory gives both broad supporting evidence and more narrow, detailed supporting evidence to show why the thesis statement is correct not just anecdotally but also scientifically and psychologically. First, we see why people in general have a difficult time accepting conflicting loyalties and desires and then how this applies to individuals through the example of the cult members from the Dr. Festinger's research.

The next paragraph continues to use more detailed examples from history to provide further evidence of why the thesis that people cannot indefinitely maintain conflicting loyalties is true.

Paragraph 4

Some will claim that it is possible to maintain conflicting beliefs or loyalties permanently, but this is often more a matter of people deluding themselves and still making a choice for one side or the other, rather than truly maintaining loyalty to both sides equally. For example, Lancelot du Lac typifies a person who claims to maintain a balanced loyalty between to two parties, but his attempt to do so fails (as all attempts to permanently maintain conflicting loyalties must). Lancelot tells himself and others that he is equally devoted to both King Arthur and his court and to being Queen Guinevere's knight (Malory, 2008). But he can neither be in two places at once to protect both the king and queen, nor can he help but let his romantic feelings for the queen to interfere with his duties to the king and the kingdom. Ultimately, he and Queen Guinevere give into their feelings for one another and Lancelot—though he denies it—chooses his loyalty to her over his loyalty to Arthur. This decision plunges the kingdom into a civil war, ages Lancelot prematurely, and ultimately leads to Camelot's ruin (Raabe, 1987). Though Lancelot claimed to have been loyal to both the king and the queen, this loyalty was ultimately in conflict, and he could not maintain it.

Here we have the acknowledgement of a potential counter-argument and the evidence as to why it isn't true.

The argument is that some people (or literary characters) have asserted that they give equal weight to their conflicting loyalties. The refutation is that, though some may claim to be able to maintain conflicting loyalties, they're either lying to others or deceiving themselves. The paragraph shows why this is true by providing an example of this in action.

Paragraph 5

Whether it be through literature or history, time and time again, people demonstrate the challenges of trying to manage conflicting loyalties and the inevitable consequences of doing so. Though belief systems are malleable and will often change over time, it is not possible to maintain two mutually exclusive loyalties or beliefs at once. In the end, people always make a choice, and loyalty for one party or one side of an issue will always trump loyalty to the other.

The concluding paragraph summarizes the essay, touches on the evidence presented, and re-states the thesis statement.

How to Write an Argumentative Essay: 8 Steps

Writing the best argumentative essay is all about the preparation, so let's talk steps:

#1: Preliminary Research

If you have the option to pick your own argumentative essay topic (which you most likely will), then choose one or two topics you find the most intriguing or that you have a vested interest in and do some preliminary research on both sides of the debate.

Do an open internet search just to see what the general chatter is on the topic and what the research trends are.

Did your preliminary reading influence you to pick a side or change your side? Without diving into all the scholarly articles at length, do you believe there's enough evidence to support your claim? Have there been scientific studies? Experiments? Does a noted scholar in the field agree with you? If not, you may need to pick another topic or side of the argument to support.

#2: Pick Your Side and Form Your Thesis

Now's the time to pick the side of the argument you feel you can support the best and summarize your main point into your thesis statement.

Your thesis will be the basis of your entire essay, so make sure you know which side you're on, that you've stated it clearly, and that you stick by your argument throughout the entire essay .

#3: Heavy-Duty Research Time

You've taken a gander at what the internet at large has to say on your argument, but now's the time to actually read those sources and take notes.

Check scholarly journals online at Google Scholar , the Directory of Open Access Journals , or JStor . You can also search individual university or school libraries and websites to see what kinds of academic articles you can access for free. Keep track of your important quotes and page numbers and put them somewhere that's easy to find later.

And don't forget to check your school or local libraries as well!

#4: Outline

Follow the five-paragraph outline structure from the previous section.

Fill in your topic, your reasons, and your supporting evidence into each of the categories.

Before you begin to flesh out the essay, take a look at what you've got. Is your thesis statement in the first paragraph? Is it clear? Is your argument logical? Does your supporting evidence support your reasoning?

By outlining your essay, you streamline your process and take care of any logic gaps before you dive headfirst into the writing. This will save you a lot of grief later on if you need to change your sources or your structure, so don't get too trigger-happy and skip this step.

Now that you've laid out exactly what you'll need for your essay and where, it's time to fill in all the gaps by writing it out.

Take it one step at a time and expand your ideas into complete sentences and substantiated claims. It may feel daunting to turn an outline into a complete draft, but just remember that you've already laid out all the groundwork; now you're just filling in the gaps.

If you have the time before deadline, give yourself a day or two (or even just an hour!) away from your essay . Looking it over with fresh eyes will allow you to see errors, both minor and major, that you likely would have missed had you tried to edit when it was still raw.

Take a first pass over the entire essay and try your best to ignore any minor spelling or grammar mistakes—you're just looking at the big picture right now. Does it make sense as a whole? Did the essay succeed in making an argument and backing that argument up logically? (Do you feel persuaded?)

If not, go back and make notes so that you can fix it for your final draft.

Once you've made your revisions to the overall structure, mark all your small errors and grammar problems so you can fix them in the next draft.

#7: Final Draft

Use the notes you made on the rough draft and go in and hack and smooth away until you're satisfied with the final result.

A checklist for your final draft:

• Formatting is correct according to your teacher's standards
• No errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation
• Essay is the right length and size for the assignment
• The argument is present, consistent, and concise
• Each reason is supported by relevant evidence
• The essay makes sense overall

#8: Celebrate!

Once you've brought that final draft to a perfect polish and turned in your assignment, you're done! Go you!

Be prepared and ♪ you'll never go hungry again ♪, *cough*, or struggle with your argumentative essay-writing again. (Walt Disney Studios)

Good Examples of Argumentative Essays Online

Theory is all well and good, but examples are key. Just to get you started on what a fully-fleshed out argumentative essay looks like, let's see some examples in action.

Check out these two argumentative essay examples on the use of landmines and freons (and note the excellent use of concrete sources to back up their arguments!).

The Use of Landmines

A Shattered Sky

The Take-Aways: Keys to Writing an Argumentative Essay

At first, writing an argumentative essay may seem like a monstrous hurdle to overcome, but with the proper preparation and understanding, you'll be able to knock yours out of the park.

Remember the differences between a persuasive essay and an argumentative one, make sure your thesis is clear, and double-check that your supporting evidence is both relevant to your point and well-sourced . Pick your topic, do your research, make your outline, and fill in the gaps. Before you know it, you'll have yourself an A+ argumentative essay there, my friend.

What's Next?

Now you know the ins and outs of an argumentative essay, but how comfortable are you writing in other styles? Learn more about the four writing styles and when it makes sense to use each .

Understand how to make an argument, but still having trouble organizing your thoughts? Check out our guide to three popular essay formats and choose which one is right for you.

Ready to make your case, but not sure what to write about? We've created a list of 50 potential argumentative essay topics to spark your imagination.

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Facebook Has a Superuser-Supremacy Problem

Most public activity on the platform comes from a tiny, hyperactive group of abusive users. Facebook relies on them to decide what everyone sees.

I f you want to understand why Facebook too often is a cesspool of hate and disinformation, a good place to start is with users such as John, Michelle, and Calvin.

John, a caps-lock devotee from upstate New York, calls House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “PIGLOSI,” uses the term negro , and says that the right response to Democrats with whom they disagree is to “SHOOT all of them.” Michelle rails against the “plandemic.” Calvin uses gay as a slur and declares that Black neighborhoods are always “SHITHOLES.” You’ve almost certainly encountered people like these on the internet. What you may not realize, though, is just how powerful they are.

For more than a year, we’ve been analyzing a massive new data set that we designed to study public behavior on the 500 U.S. Facebook pages that get the most engagement from users. Our research, part of which will be submitted for peer review later this year, aims to better understand the people who spread hate and misinformation on Facebook. We hoped to learn how they use the platform and, crucially, how Facebook responds. Based on prior reporting, we expected it would be ugly. What we found was much worse.

Read: Facebook is a Doomsday Machine

The most alarming aspect of our findings is that people like John, Michelle, and Calvin aren’t merely fringe trolls, or a distraction from what really matters on the platform. They are part of an elite, previously unreported class of users that produce more likes, shares, reactions, comments, and posts than 99 percent of Facebook users in America.

They’re superusers. And because Facebook’s algorithm rewards engagement, these superusers have enormous influence over which posts are seen first in other users’ feeds, and which are never seen at all. Even more shocking is just how nasty most of these hyper-influential users are. The most abusive people on Facebook, it turns out, are given the most power to shape what Facebook is.

F acebook activity is far more concentrated than most realize. The company likes to emphasize the breadth of its platform: nearly 2.9 billion monthly active users, visiting millions of public pages and groups. This is misleading. Our analysis shows that public activity is focused on a far narrower set of pages and groups, frequented by a much thinner slice of users.

Top pages such as those of Ben Shapiro, Fox News, and Occupy Democrats generated tens of millions of interactions a month in our data, while all U.S. pages ranked 300 or lower in terms of engagement received less than 1 million interactions each. (The pages with the most engagement included examples from the far right and the far left, but right-wing pages were dominant among the top-ranked overtly political pages.) This winners-take-all pattern mirrors that seen in many other arenas, such as the dominance of a few best-selling books or the way a few dozen huge blue-chip firms dominate the total market capitalization of the S&P 500. On Facebook, though, the concentration of attention on a few ultra-popular pages has not been widely known.

We analyzed two months of public activity from the 500 U.S.-run pages with the highest average engagement in the summer of 2020. The top pages lean toward politics, but the list includes pages on a broad mix of other subjects too: animals, daily motivation, Christian devotional content, cooking and crafts, and of course news, sports, and entertainment. User engagement fell off so steeply across the top 500, and in such a statistically regular fashion, that we estimate these 500 pages accounted for about half of the public U.S. page engagement on the platform. (We conducted our research with a grant from the nonprofit Hopewell Fund, which is part of a network of organizations that distribute anonymous donations to progressive causes. Officials at Hopewell were not involved in any way in our research, or in assessing or approving our conclusions. The grant we received is not attached to any political cause but is instead part of a program focused on supporting researchers studying misinformation and accountability on the social web.)

Public groups differ from pages in several ways. Pages usually represent organizations or public figures, and only administrators are able to post content on them, while groups are like old-school internet forums where any user can post. Groups thus tend to have a much higher volume of posts, more comments, and fewer likes and shares—but they also follow a winners-take-all pattern, albeit a less extreme one.

Because the number of group posts is so much larger, we analyzed groups more intensely over two weeks within that same two-month time frame in 2020, looking at tens of millions of the highest-interaction posts from more than 41,000 of the highest-membership U.S. public groups.

Adrienne LaFrance: ‘History will not judge us kindly’

Overall, we observed 52 million users active on these U.S. pages and public groups, less than a quarter of Facebook’s claimed user base in the country. Among this publicly active minority of users, the top 1 percent of accounts were responsible for 35 percent of all observed interactions; the top 3 percent were responsible for 52 percent. Many users, it seems, rarely, if ever, interact with public groups or pages.

As skewed as those numbers are, they still underestimate the dominance of superusers. Facebook users follow a consistent ladder of engagement. Low-public-activity users overwhelmingly do just one thing: They like a post or two on one of the most popular pages. As activity increases, users perform more types of public engagement—adding shares, reactions, and then comments—and spread out beyond the most popular pages and groups. As we look at smaller and smaller pages and groups, then, we find that more and more of their engagement comes from the most avid users. Complete coverage of the smaller pages and tiniest groups we miss would thus paint an even starker picture of superuser supremacy.

The dominance of superusers has huge implications beyond just our initial concern with abusive users. Perhaps the most important revelations that came from the former Facebook data engineer Frances Haugen’s trove of internal documents concerned the inner workings of Facebook’s key algorithm, called “Meaningful Social Interaction,” or MSI. Facebook introduced MSI in 2018, as it was confronting declining engagement across its platform, and Zuckerberg hailed the change as a way to help “ connect with people we care about .” Facebook reportedly tied employees’ bonuses to the measure .

The basics of MSI are simple: It ranks posts by assigning points for different public interactions. Posts with a lot of MSI tend to end up at the top of users’ news feeds—and posts with little are, usually, never seen at all. According to The Wall Street Journal , when MSI was first rolled out on the platform, a “like” was worth one point; reactions and re-shares were worth five points; “nonsignificant” comments were worth 15 points; and “significant” comments or messages were worth 30.

A metric like MSI, which gives more weight to less frequent behaviors such as comments, confers influence on an even smaller set of users. Using the values referenced by The Wall Street Journal and drawing from Haugen’s documents, we estimate that the top 1 percent of publicly visible users would have produced about 45 percent of MSI on the pages and groups we observed, plus or minus a couple percent depending on what counts as a “significant” comment. Mark Zuckerberg initially killed changes to the News Feed proposed by Facebook’s integrity team, according to internal messages characterizing his reasoning, because he was worried about lower MSI . Because activity is so concentrated, though, this effectively let hyperactive users veto the very policies that would have reined in their own abuse.

Our data suggests that a majority of MSI on top U.S. pages came from about 700,000 users out of the more than 230 million users that Facebook claims to have in America. Facebook declined to answer our questions for this article, and instead provided this statement: “While we’re not able to comment on research we haven’t seen, the small parts that have been shared with us are inaccurate and seem to fundamentally misunderstand how News Feed works. Ranking is optimized for what we predict each person wants to see, not what the most active users do.”

Facebook’s comments aside, it is well documented that the company has long used friends’ and general users’ activity as the key predictor of “what users want to see,” and that MSI in particular has been Zuckerberg’s “north star.” Various reporting shows how Facebook has repeatedly tweaked the weights of different MSI components, such as reaction emoji. Initially five points, they were dropped to four, then one and a half, then likes and loves were boosted to two while the angry emoji’s weight was dropped to zero. As The Atlantic first reported last year, internal documents show that Facebook engineers say they found that reducing the weight of “angry” translated to a substantial reduction in hate speech and misinformation. Facebook says it made that change permanent in the fall of 2020. An internal email from January 2020 says that Facebook was rolling out a change that would reduce the influence strangers had on the MSI metric.

Our research shows something different: None of this tweaking changes the big picture. The users who produce the most public reactions also produce the most likes, shares, and comments—so re-weighting just reshuffles slightly which of the most active users matter more. Now that we can see that harmful behaviors come mostly from superusers, it’s very clear: So long as adding up different types of engagement remains a key ingredient in Facebook’s recommendation system, it amplifies the choices of the same ultra-narrow, largely hateful slice of users.

So who are these people? To answer that question, we looked at a random sample of 30,000 users, out of the more than 52 million users we observed participating on these pages and public groups. We focused on the most active 300 by total interactions, those in the top percentile in their total likes, shares, reactions, comments, and group posts. Our review of these accounts, based on their public profile information and pictures, shows that these top users skew white, older, and—especially among abusive users—male. Under-30 users are largely absent.

Because the top 300 were all heavy users, three-quarters of them left at least 20 public comments over our two-month period, and some left thousands. We read as many of their comments as we could, more than 80,000 total.

Of the 219 accounts with at least 25 public comments, 68 percent spread misinformation, reposted in spammy ways, published comments that were racist or sexist or anti-Semitic or anti-gay, wished violence on their perceived enemies, or, in most cases, several of the above. Even with a 6 percent margin of error, it is clear that a supermajority of the most active users are toxic.

Top users pushed a dizzying and contradictory flood of misinformation. Many asserted that COVID does not exist, that the pandemic is a form of planned mass murder, or that it is an elaborate plot to microchip the population through “the killer vaccination program” of Bill Gates. Over and over, these users declared that vaccines kill, that masks make you sick, and that hydroxychloroquine and zinc fix everything. The misinformation we encountered wasn’t all about COVID-19—lies about mass voter fraud appeared in more than 1,000 comments.

Racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant comments appeared constantly. Female Democratic politicians—Black ones especially—were repeatedly addressed as “bitch” and worse. Name-calling and dehumanizing language about political figures was pervasive, as were QAnon-style beliefs that the world is run by a secret cabal of international child sex traffickers.

In addition to the torrent of vile posts, dozens of top users behaved in spammy ways. We don’t see large-scale evidence of bot or nonhuman accounts in our data, and comments have traditionally been the hardest activity to fake at scale. But we do see many accounts that copy and paste identical rants across many posts on different pages. Other accounts posted repeated links to the same misinformation videos or fake news sites. Many accounts also repeated one- or two-word comments—often as simple as “yes” or “YES !!”—dozens and dozens of times, an unusual behavior for most users. Whether this behavior was coordinated or not, these throwaway comments gave a huge boost to MSI, and signaled to Facebook’s algorithm that this is what users want to see.

In many cases, this toxic mix of misinformation and hate culminated in fantasies about political violence. Many wanted to shoot, run over, hang, burn, or blow up Black Lives Matter protesters, “illegals,” or Democratic members of Congress. They typically justified this violence with racist falsehoods or imaginary claims about antifa. Many top users boasted that they were ready for the seemingly inevitable violence, that they were buying guns, that they were “locked and loaded.”

These disturbing comments were not just empty talk: Many of those indicted for participating in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol also appear in our data. We were able to connect the first 380 individuals charged to 210 Facebook accounts; 123 of these were publicly active during the time our data set was constructed, and 51 left more than 1,200 comments total. The content of those comments mirrors the top 1 percent of users in their abusive language—further illustrating the risk associated with pretending that harmful users are just a few bad apples among a more civil general user base.

R ecommendation algorithms change over time, and Facebook is notoriously secretive about its inner workings. Our research captures an important but still-limited snapshot of the platform. But so long as user engagement remains the most important ingredient in how Facebook recommends content, it will continue to give its worst users the most influence. And if things are this bad in the United States, where Facebook’s moderation efforts are most active , they are likely much worse everywhere else .

Allowing a small set of people who behave horribly to dominate the platform is Facebook’s choice, not an inevitability. If each of Facebook’s 15,000 U.S. moderators aggressively reviewed several dozen of the most active users and permanently removed those guilty of repeated violations, abuse on Facebook would drop drastically within days. But so would overall user engagement.

Perhaps this is why we found that Facebook rarely takes action, even against the worst offenders. Of the 150 accounts with clear abusive behavior in our sample, only seven were suspended a year later. Facebook may publicly condemn users who post hate, spread misinformation, and hunger for violence. In private, though, hundreds of thousands of repeat offenders still rank among the most important people on Facebook.

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