When we put mutually-hostile subpopulations (e.g. left-wing and right-wing people) together into a shared social-media space (like a subreddit, or like all of Twitter), they fling poop at each other for a while and then (if possible) split apart and form their own separate echo-chambers.

This seems like it’s causing a massive amount of destruction in the world. (That is, it’s not just a matter of “ugh, it’s unpleasant to talk about anything controversial on Twitter”; social media is increasingly how we form our opinions and make sense of the world, and even how we form public policy. This is actually important.)

I like the idea of trying to decrease polarization by introducing some more structured-data and incentives into the system.

In particular, I think it’s fruitless to try to force conflicting subgroups to share the same space; that just creates a worst-of-both-worlds, where people feel like they have to fight for control of the space, and in the long run they end up splitting apart into echo chambers anyway.

So I wonder whether it might work better to:

  • Explicitly design the system with the assumption that there will be echo chambers. e.g. Let people subscribe to whatever creators and tags they’re interested in, and use recommendation algorithms like “here are some people who have similar tastes as you, and here are some posts/creators that they’ve liked”.
  • Then create systems that can identify content/people that build bridges between the echo chambers. e.g. Use some sort of decentralized tagging system to tag a piece of content with a tag that means, “This was written from a right-wing perspective but I don’t think it would be enraging to a left-wing person.” (Or vice versa, of course.) So that people who are interested in that sort of non-inflammatory content can subscribe to see other content with those tags. (And as the recommendation system learns their preferences, they’ll have more of that kind of content recommended to them.)
  • And then incentivize the creation of those bridges. e.g. “Here is $X earmarked for donation to content that many people have tagged using one of those non-inflammatory-content tags.”

Obviously this doesn’t prevent people from doing all the usual poop-flinging/echo-chamber stuff. But for whoever is interested in incentivizing the creation of non-polarizing content, maybe we can create systems that make that possible/easier.

(Crossposted on /r/Web3SocialMedia; feel free to comment there.)