Nothing survives the network effect, at least this is the lesson I’ve gleaned from the past 50 years of news reporting.
Just from the late 90s to today in America we went from Fox to twitter/Facebook and then automated news site generators.
All of them systems designed to maximize “engagement” to drive ad revenues. The victim ? The pollution of the human noise to signal ratio.
Western society is dealing with a perfect weak spot in our enlightenment values based societies
1) freedom of speech
2) freedom to do stupid things
3) human biological design to be attracted to attention seeking material
4) competitive market pressure
Any solution we could come up with, will never solve for all four constraints.
Create a new BBC? High quality news, well funded ? People will watch whatever panders to their biases instead.
Want to reach out to people ? You have to beat Fox News at their game and race to the bottom.
Want to pass legislation to fix this? Free speech issues.
———————-
In the end society will adapt, we’ll find a lower equilibriums point where we have structures that mitigate the cost of verifying information.
We’ll form tribes, follow fads, limit damage from misinformation, and endure.
But like brexit, there’s no happy end to this situation because the goals and paths available are in direct contradiction with each other.
Nothing survives the network effect, at least this is the lesson I’ve gleaned from the past 50 years of news reporting.
Just from the late 90s to today in America we went from Fox to twitter/Facebook and then automated news site generators.
All of them systems designed to maximize “engagement” to drive ad revenues. The victim ? The pollution of the human noise to signal ratio.
Western society is dealing with a perfect weak spot in our enlightenment values based societies
1) freedom of speech
2) freedom to do stupid things
3) human biological design to be attracted to attention seeking material
4) competitive market pressure
Any solution we could come up with, will never solve for all four constraints.
Create a new BBC? High quality news, well funded ? People will watch whatever panders to their biases instead.
Want to reach out to people ? You have to beat Fox News at their game and race to the bottom.
Want to pass legislation to fix this? Free speech issues.
———————-
In the end society will adapt, we’ll find a lower equilibriums point where we have structures that mitigate the cost of verifying information.
We’ll form tribes, follow fads, limit damage from misinformation, and endure.
But like brexit, there’s no happy end to this situation because the goals and paths available are in direct contradiction with each other.