The grifter content mill
In a 2017 interview, Ev Williams (the founder of Twitter), said something that has stuck with me since: “the trouble with algorithms, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it trie... See more
sari azout • My Favorite Questions
“Time Well Spent” is a better metric for content than popularity (likes, clicks, or views). But the internet doesn’t reward that - nearly every content platform today is optimized for popularity, not value, and this has led us astray, promoting fear based, viral content instead of things that are worth our time.
The economics of the internet created a twisted set of incentives that make traffic more important—and more profitable—than the truth. With the mass media—and today, mass culture—relying on the web for the next big thing, it is a set of incentives with massive implications.