Direct MP3 | Overcast | Apple Podcasts | Blog post / show notes
I first felt the broken incentives of the attention economy when I was working as a product designer in Silicon Valley.
Why did I have to place an ad right where a user was trying to read? Why did it seem impossible to design a social application with a business model that wasn't ad-supported?
These incentives force the hand of product designers to create products that distract. I explored this topic in a conversation with Hooked author Nir Eyal. Sam Harris also recently had a conversation with the "Time Well Spent" movement founder Tristan Harris.
Nir's antidote to addictive technology is using technology (such as an ad blocker) to circumvent such technology. Tristan is calling for a product designer "code of ethics." Just where the economic will to follow such a code will come from is unclear.
Yes, you can question the ethics of the attention economy, and you can use powers of persuasion to change behavior for the good (such as the Pavlok shock wristband. The creator, Maneesh Sethi, has also been on my podcast).
But what about the question of who is getting rich off of who's work? Social networks have no value without the people who create the content. Facebook would be far less valuable if it weren't for those who create content to be shared on the platform.
Traditional economic exchanges aren't effective in supporting the creation of such work. The threshold for a user to feel justified in compensating a creator directly is too high (see the work of Dan Ariely, also on my podcast).
So, "tipping" platforms have failed, and it remains to be seen whether subscription platforms work. Advertising is what's left, and the economics of that model are the problem.
STEEM compensates according to work done within the network, and it appears to [reduce cognitive friction] in distributing rewards.
Will it work? We explore that and more. It was great to have 