Bad Incentives Hard Problems, Good Incentives Easy Problems
Or "How to Solve Misinformation on the Internet"
“Elon Musk’s twitter is not the solution for misinformation”
It kind of is exactly that.
“What makes it so special”
The same thing that makes Tesla *different* from like a Ford EV. The only thing they have in common is they are both American electric cars
Two pictures below show before and after
On the left-hand side, there's a typical news headline about a current event, sensationalized for virality. It's about the Kenyan government being critical of a YouTuber who is creating drinkable water sources for its citizens. On the right-hand side is the same story, but accompanied by a Twitter-exclusive feature called Community Notes. This feature allows readers to correct misinformation and clarify facts right beneath the original post. In this case, the notes reveal that the criticism of the YouTuber came from just two sources: an opportunist politician and a faux non-profit. With this feature, even as the sensationalized version spreads among friends and family, readers can see a more accurate, non-sensationalized take, complete with sources, directly below the original post. This helps them understand that the Kenyan government might actually welcome the YouTuber’s efforts.
It is not a complicated solution, but it is largely effective at fixing the problem while respecting people’s right to free speech. You have to ask why other companies don’t copy the community notes feature, and it’s arguably because it pisses off journalists who get paid for clicks. Today, Elon Musk may be the only public company CEO that is completely comfortable with getting ostracized by society. This gives him freedom to do things that other CEOs cannot.
Even aside from the problem of misinformation, I’m increasingly reading about other major problems that leaders are incentivized to leave unsolved. In the below clip, Jared Kushner, former US presidential advisor, said that before Trump, no country in Middle East had a reason to solve their problems with Israel because each side made money from the US by blaming it on thousands of years of war. When the money became contingent on peace deals, they quickly came around to the idea of settlement
Returning to the problem of misinformation, it’s important to recognize that solving it will not be met with the cheers and applause of a normal startup. The goal of social media is often misunderstood; most people think it's to technologically ban misinformation from the internet through some all-knowing algorithm. However, this is fundamentally impossible. If a CEO acknowledges this unsolvability, there's no need to enter into conflict with journalists, who may be underratedly frequent suppliers of misinformation. But, the real tension might not be with journalists. People like Mark Zuckerberg are likely more concerned with maintaining peace with governments. This concern arises from the fact that governments might prefer limiting the free flow of verified information, as it maintains their control over public opinion. In an ideal state for governments, social media articles would be unilaterally supportive of their policies.
Previously considered a conspiracy theory, this notion gained credibility after Elon Musk took over Twitter. He exposed via The Twitter Files that the FBI had a division with thousands of employees dedicated to reading tweets and deciding which ones to ban from discourse. By re-framing the problem as simply exposing people who supply it, it becomes a much easier problem that can be solved even by an undergrad.
The point is that to understand why some problems are trivial to solve and others seem entirely impossible, start with understanding the incentives of the leaders assigned to fixing them. What do they have to gain by keeping problems complicated? As Charlie Munger says, “show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome”