Published on March 13, 2025 7:28 AM GMT
The underlying design goal of modern social media is to make money, regardless of the real value they generate. Their customers are advertisers and data brokers, and they sell the users to them. By design and in practice, social media maximize the amount of time that users are on the application. The real-world effects of social media time-maximizing algorithms on the information space are sensationalism[1], and atomization via pockets of radicalizing media that are not in contact with dissenting views.
This media design is something like the default state that one would expect, when imagining all the possibilities that the internet could facilitate: forums that have algorithms to keep people entertained. From the point of view of someone in 1989 speculating on the new democratic possibilities of the internet, I’m sure they would be disappointed to find that the money-grubbing default remains the state-of-the-art. They would surely be confused how information has never been more available and more confused, that people generate so much data and can’t be bothered to organize it. Despite the haphazard nature of discourse generated by social media sites, they are an increasingly large platform for news[2].
This negative state of affairs shouldn't overshadow the huge positives innovations that social media has, which be carried over when designing new forums. Social media gives a voice to people in an incredible way, and can connecting those who otherwise wouldn’t be. How can we extend these social benefits to information sharing? How do we make social media a place where people can learn, hear counterpoints, grow, and quickly take in the state of a subject from all sides?
Design
News Analysis forum
Everybody everywhere criticizes the news coming from at least some sources, and for good reason. Not only is reporting sometimes incorrect, but the mode of reporting can often exclude details, put a political spin on something, or simply leave out half the story. It takes a critical and well read eye to take in news. But there's no reason that people should need to individually criticize and come up with their own take on news. There's no such thing as perfect news reporting, but people can collectively correct for the flaws, if only they had the forum to do so. Current social media has a comments section, but that is not often a constructive logical environment. Moreover, these comments are not meant to be read and catalogued as a resource, so they are not incentivized to give a responsible take. Often, comments are removed altogether for certain posts.
If instead, a medium had page dedicated to news stories that was meant to be a community grounding to an article, story or wire report, this would become the best source for reading news, since diverse criticism and fact-checking comes with the story[3]. On the comment-writer's side, it would elevate an atomized individual's criticism into a community service. These news analysis forum pages would act as a jumping-off point for the second, more important feature that I'm proposing.
Dynamic user posts using structured citations
Basic posting on social media often does not allow the space for nuanced ideas, and a 'feed' where the most attention consuming posts are recommended silences the moderate voices that may be the most important.
With a posting system that dynamically pulls from the news analysis pages, and other forms of citations that are necessarily subject to that same level of scrutiny, users write with a level of factual rigor that is rare even in professional journalism. This overt structure incentivizing clarity and quality can correct for the fact that users often make mistakes: they'll have the readers to check them on their facts. With the user feedback on the sources and their arguments modularly, they'll then be able to modify their posts to represent the truth, in a sort of community editorial process.
I believe this is the foundation of a design that can improve the information space dramatically. publicsphere.fyi if you're interested in supporting the project.
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This sensationalism often takes the form of personality news commentators: “Ask someone in your life under 40 where they get the news. Odds are they’ll mention a non-newsroom podcaster or YouTuber.”
Julia Munslow Senior Platform Editor on the Social Visuals Team at The Wall Street Journal
https://www.twipemobile.com/what-will-the-news-media-industry-look-like-in-2025/ - ^
Pew RS Poll on media platforms shows younger people tend to use social media as a news source more:
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/ - ^
“Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online,”
Why do Americans share so much fake news? One big reason is they aren’t paying attention, new research suggests
https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/03/why-do-americans-share-so-much-fake-news-one-big-reason-is-they-arent-paying-attention-new-research-suggests/
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