State of the Internet

We are all collectively haunted by the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle: We are all finding that it really is 10x harder to debunk lies than it is to produce them, leading to things like ragebait as a marketing and product strategy - it’s also a great way to raise a lot of venture capital money?

Machines need not have agency over us; we can choose how to engage with them. By conserving our cognitive energy and setting meaningful goals, it supports us to act with intention, and we reclaim control. As the research shows, the effort may be high, but so are the rewards.

Consider how online radicalization happens: the combination of user agency (proactive search) and algorithmic amplification (recommending related content) leads people to weird places—to micro-cults of internet strangers with their own norms, values, and world-models. No corporate malice is necessary; the ML engineers at YouTube don’t care about... See more