The Problem
Documentaries such as the Social Dilemma and books such as Breaking the Social Media Prism have helped create general awareness of the way social media harms society: by creating perverse feedback loops that promote the spread of misinformation, political polarization, and psychological harm.
The Solution
We believe it is possible not only to understand these feedback loops, but to intentionally engineer healthy feedback loops that reward users for behavior that others find not just engaging, but also civil, honest and defensible with reasons.
Our Work
In the articles below we describe some possible technologies for creating more healthy social media feedback loops. Whether these technologies are integrated into other social platforms, or we are build them into new social platforms of our own, our goal is to contribute to the next generation of healthy social platforms.
Give Truth the Advantage
“There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies.” – Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News, 1920 The Algo...
Truthtelling Games
or How to Get People on the Internet to Tell the Truth Everyone knows that you can’t believe what you read on the Internet. That is, unless it comes from p...
Information Elicitation Mechanisms
Paying for the Truth This essay explains how you can pay people to tell the truth, even if you can’t verify their answers. The key is to create the right...
The Law of Attention
Summary “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If content is distributed and no attention is paid to it, doe...
The Deliberative Poll
A deliberative poll measures the informed opinion of a group of people who have participated in a discussion about the topic of the poll. This essay introduc...
Distributed Bayesian Reasoning
Distributed Bayesian Reasoning is a kind of hypothetical opinion poll. It tells us not what people actually believe, but what they would believe if they knew...
A Bayesian Account of Argumentation
Quantifying Argument What makes for a good argument? How can this be quantified? From a logical point of view, a good argument is logically sound. But in ...
Deliberati Argument Model
In this article we introduce a few key terms and concepts used to develop the mathematics of Distributed Bayesian Reasoning.