But I think calling it pay-for-click is a misnomer, that's just the latest version of a very old business model. Cable news, like Fox, has had the same outrage-fueled engagement metrics that predate the internet, and before them there were newspapers doing the same thing. I think the technology of social media is just creating small efficiencies in an existing business model preying on very old aspects of human nature.
I think the difference is that cable news is hard to access for a lot of people. For example, you don’t have ML algorithms on cable boxes trying to suggest a show which will result in high engagement. It’s fairly siloed, in that you have to deliberately choose to watch cable news. (Though they definitely keep you hooked!) Social media really allows it to be much more pervasive.
Annecdotally, Cable news seems to work just as effectively at confirming prior biases as social media among my relatives who don't have computers / smartphones, maybe even more effectively. I'm skeptical that the algorithms are so much better than people self sorting between news networks that it's a difference of kind rather than degree, and I think we give "the algorithms" way too much credit in general
