Make Truth Matter Again

How we restore truth in social networks

Does truth have any value in social media today?

If we look at the algorithms that drive content on platforms, the answer is clear.

Imagine two users — Alice and Bob — posting about whether eating apples is good for you.

Alice does original research and posts her findings on the health benefits of eating apples.

Bob, in the meantime, makes up a story about how apples are a government conspiracy to slowly poison the population.

In the time it took Alice to do actual research, Bob was working on making his post maximally engaging (and maybe made up a few more stories).

Guess whose post will get more engagement. Guess which one the algorithm will boost.

In the current system truth has no value; worse, it’s a liability!

The system penalizes you for being ethical, and for taking the time to research the facts.

At the same time it rewards those who exaggerate, distort, or fabricate.

The algos are not designed to inform you, or to ensure that the most valuable information rises to the top.

Whatever content is most popular — and therefore most profitable for the platform — will get the most distribution.

So the platform profits while the network suffers.

And users end up swimming in a sea of slop and manipulation, where they can’t tell what is real and what’s made up.

The problem, of course, isn’t that a controversial story drives engagement — that’s expected.

The problem is the platforms’ broken incentives that make them promote such behavior.

As legendary investor Charlie Munger liked to say, “show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome.”

Why are the incentives broken?

Let’s think about what kind of outcomes we’re looking for from a network.

We want users to get content that they’re interested in and benefit from. We also want those who create the content to be rewarded based on their contribution to the network.

To get there, a platform needs a business model where profits align with these outcomes.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re seeing today from any social media platform.

Instead, platforms are using industrial age scarcity metrics that have little to do with creating the most network value.

This is what happens when any kind of scarcity metric is used — whether it’s Daily Active Users (DAU), subscribers, transactions, or speculation on content popularity.

As long as the platforms monetize anything without a clear feedback loop between network value and profit, we’d get the same lousy outcomes — the platform (through its algo) and users (through their content) will always have a perverse incentive to optimize for the metric at the expense of the network.

If the platform monetizes attention through advertising, it will have the incentive to boost those posts that are most engaging, regardless of their veracity. Then in turn users will have an incentive to create such posts instead of focusing on network value.

If the platform monetizes subscriptions, it will have the incentive to do whatever it takes to grow the number of subscribers — degrading the experience of non-paying users, pushing content that reinforces the biases of the majority of users, and so on.

Regardless of the scarcity metric used, the outcomes are always the same.

The only way to change that dynamic, and restore truth in social media, is with a network-centric business model that aligns platform profits with network value.

When the incentives are aligned, and contributors know that they’re rewarded based on their network impact, suddenly the dynamics are reversed.

Alice is rewarded for contributing to the growing body of knowledge on apples in the network. She gains credibility in the network, and decides to do nutrition research as a full-time job.

Bob meanwhile acquires the reputation of an engagement farmer. The platform doesn’t boost his content, nor is there any forthcoming reward.

Bob refocuses his approach and decides to make valuable contributions to the network — with the occasional controversial take (for good measure).

When the incentives are aligned, the platform is focused on boosting signal, not engagement. It wants every user to derive the most value from the network, and every contributor to be rewarded fairly.

This way the network works for the benefit of users, while the platform profits from maximizing this benefit.

Each user only needs to optimize one metric — how to create the most value for the network.

Then, suddenly truth matters again.