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"Newspapers optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need subscriptions to sell to advertisers, so all mar

"Newspapers optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need subscriptions to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all headlines are constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who read their articles." "Magazines optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need subscriptions to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all covers are constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who read their articles." "Television stations optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need viewers to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all programming is constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who tune in." "Radio stations optimize for engagement by any means necessary. That's how their incentives are aligned. They need listeners to sell to advertisers, so all market tests and all programming is constantly being changed to increase the amount of people who tune in."

intended 6y ago
Yes - absolutely this. Earlier the media market was able to make the case of "free speech" and we had no way of arguing that this cycle was true or not. At the old rate of content, the harms were less prominent and the system seemed to balance itself out (although the behavior of certain media outlets indicate that it was a problem even then.) Markets force optimization, and for media firms the optimization force is engagement. This has been a problem from before and its the same problem now, except at a content sharing speed which the old arguments were not built for.
rpdillon 6y ago
I see the argument repeated quite a bit. I think it's easy to read this and think "Nothing new, just more of the same, maybe a little worse now". I don't think that's quite right though. A television station can only broadcast 24 hours of content a day. A newspaper can only have so many editions per day, and each edition has a limited number of pages. The same is true of television and radio. But the common factor among all of them is that there is a common reality that everyone is looking at, and there is scarcity because of that: the publication has to choose what will appear each day to the readers/watchers it serves. The ideal formula is to draw a large group of people in with really engaging content, and then show them advertisements that are likely to be effective for the group of folks drawn to the content. This presents a three-way tradeoff: 1. Write about stuff folks want to read about (but don't make it so outlandish that you ruin your credibility!) 2. Show effective advertisements alongside that content (but not so much you drive them away!) 3. Show enough variety to draw in a large crowd (but still know your target demographic!) Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio all faced this dynamic and had to make the right tradeoffs to survive. But there is no common "Facebook" published each day. We can't say "Hey, did you see the top story today on Facebook?" Each article can target a tiny segment of the population and be designed just to keep only those folks engaged. And there's no need to tie a particular advertisement to a particular piece of content, advertisements and content can be selected in realtime based on models of the user's behavior. And drawing in a large crowd is easy, since there's content and advertisements for every tiny group that any entity is interested in targeting. The scarcity that forced reasonable tradeoffs in other mediums simply isn't present on social media. This is a huge difference that isn't captured at all in the "optimize engagement by any means necessary" argument. Put another way: the problem isn't that incentives are different, it's that the tools available now remove scarcity that previously shaped the entire industry.
torpfactory 6y ago
I think the core difference is the level of tailoring and the automation of that tailoring. Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio have all had the same incentives in the past, but architecturally the approach was one to many. At first the internet was more of the same, but today social media companies construct optimized engagements for each individual, automatically and very effectively. This is a one-to-one optimization. Furthermore, social media supercharges the engagement by piggybacking on our social nature - people are usually responding to stuff their friends posted or commented on. This both allows disinformation to be received as more truthful (my friend sent it, why would they lie?) and simply makes it more compelling (I get to be happy/sad/outraged with my friends). Put it all together and it really is different than before. It's fine to compare it to historical changes in media. I don't agree that it's just more of the same though, the differences make this a whole new animal.

intended 6y ago

Yes - absolutely this. Earlier the media market was able to make the case of "free speech" and we had no way of arguing that this cycle was true or not. At the old rate of content, the harms were less prominent and the system seemed to balance itself out (although the behavior of certain media outlets indicate that it was a problem even then.) Markets force optimization, and for media firms the optimization force is engagement. This has been a problem from before and its the same problem now, except at a content sharing speed which the old arguments were not built for.

rpdillon 6y ago

I see the argument repeated quite a bit. I think it's easy to read this and think "Nothing new, just more of the same, maybe a little worse now". I don't think that's quite right though. A television station can only broadcast 24 hours of content a day. A newspaper can only have so many editions per day, and each edition has a limited number of pages. The same is true of television and radio. But the common factor among all of them is that there is a common reality that everyone is looking at, and there is scarcity because of that: the publication has to choose what will appear each day to the readers/watchers it serves. The ideal formula is to draw a large group of people in with really engaging content, and then show them advertisements that are likely to be effective for the group of folks drawn to the content. This presents a three-way tradeoff: 1. Write about stuff folks want to read about (but don't make it so outlandish that you ruin your credibility!) 2. Show effective advertisements alongside that content (but not so much you drive them away!) 3. Show enough variety to draw in a large crowd (but still know your target demographic!) Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio all faced this dynamic and had to make the right tradeoffs to survive. But there is no common "Facebook" published each day. We can't say "Hey, did you see the top story today on Facebook?" Each article can target a tiny segment of the population and be designed just to keep only those folks engaged. And there's no need to tie a particular advertisement to a particular piece of content, advertisements and content can be selected in realtime based on models of the user's behavior. And drawing in a large crowd is easy, since there's content and advertisements for every tiny group that any entity is interested in targeting. The scarcity that forced reasonable tradeoffs in other mediums simply isn't present on social media. This is a huge difference that isn't captured at all in the "optimize engagement by any means necessary" argument. Put another way: the problem isn't that incentives are different, it's that the tools available now remove scarcity that previously shaped the entire industry.

torpfactory 6y ago

I think the core difference is the level of tailoring and the automation of that tailoring. Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio have all had the same incentives in the past, but architecturally the approach was one to many. At first the internet was more of the same, but today social media companies construct optimized engagements for each individual, automatically and very effectively. This is a one-to-one optimization. Furthermore, social media supercharges the engagement by piggybacking on our social nature - people are usually responding to stuff their friends posted or commented on. This both allows disinformation to be received as more truthful (my friend sent it, why would they lie?) and simply makes it more compelling (I get to be happy/sad/outraged with my friends). Put it all together and it really is different than before. It's fine to compare it to historical changes in media. I don't agree that it's just more of the same though, the differences make this a whole new animal.