Realigning Online Incentives

Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges issues with attention-grabbing content on Facebook in a 2018 article. He found that people are naturally attracted to “sensationalist and provocative content,” and that “people will engage with it more on average — even when they tell us afterwards they don’t like the content. Mark Zuckerberg admits that borderline content makes Facebook worse, yet does not acknowledge that Facebook is incentivized to show extreme content. All companies seeking ad revenue online are competing for attention, they are competing in a zero sum game.