Perverse Incentives Have Created a Runaway Media Monster

A Monster Id of self-reinforcing perverse incentives is gathering strength with every click, every data point collected and every unseen algorithmic adjustment of the addictive dosage.

Much of what we rightly decry as dysfunctional is the result of perverse incentives built into systems not from malice but from the self-reinforcing nature of self-interest: whatever mechanisms serve self-interest are reinforced by those benefiting the most from their institutionalization as “the way the world works.”

What started out as of self-evident utility--for example, fee for service healthcare--slowly transmogrified from a common-sense model of modest costs into a monstrous industry with an insatiable appetite for revenues, profits and the political influence needed to further its permanent expansion.

Though the system goes by the same name--fee for service--it bears no resemblance to its initial incarnation. The mechanisms of self-enrichment now dominate the entire system via the perverse incentives that have been codified by regulations and institutionalized in vast corporate cartels.

This same self-reinforcing progression from a modest model with promise to a corporate-dominated monstrosity that enriches the few at the expense of the many has now reached its perverse-incentives perfection in the media, from mainstream to social media.

The Web as a means of distributing content to every user started with decentralized, self-organizing mechanisms such as bulletin boards and web-hosting of websites and blogs. The machinery of generating revenue was limited to display adverts. Search was organic, meaning search engines were designed to crawl the Web and return the most relevant external links as search results.

The advent of online auctions for key words and search placement (Overture et al.) transformed search from an organic service funded by display adverts to a vast revenue generation machine powered by auctioning search placement to the highest bidders.

With the introduction of centralized social media platforms, the Web’s center of gravity shifted from self-organizing message boards, commercial sites and wildly diverse blogs unaffected by centralized surveillance, monitoring and censorship via ill-defined community standards to a model of users generating content for free while the revenues generated by collecting and selling users’ data flow to the corporate owners of the platform.

An insignificant percentage of this vast flow of revenues is distributed to a tiny sliver of users who manage to attract millions of views / listens, i.e. engagement. For example, content creators who pile up one million views earn a magnificent $10 for their ceaseless efforts in promoting the content enriching the corporate owners of the social media platforms.

Where advertising networks once paid a meaningful share of display advert revenues to the sites that hosted the ads, once Big Tech gained centralized, network-effects dominance, these revenues dwindled to insignificance for all but the handful of sites with massive audiences. Most of the advert revenue is collected by the search and social media platforms which now dominate user content creation and engagement.

This arrangement is fueled by radically perverse incentives for all participants. The content creators are incentivized to post the most “engaging” content, which due to human nature tends to be sensationalized, exaggerated, emotion-triggering content that is indistinguishable from propaganda, misinformation and slop.

AI has incentivized the reach by content creators for higher revenues via posting ever greater volumes of videos, audio and text content. As it becomes harder to distinguish authentic content from AI slop, the platforms’ overall content is inevitably degraded / debauched.

The platforms have every incentive to increase the addictive powers of their algorithms and the content generated by users, as the greater the user engagement, the more data they can collect and sell--and use to tailor what’s delivered to individual users to maximize their profits.

Faced with this endless spew of intentionally addictive, sensationalized Ultra-Processed content, mainstream media outlets have increased the density of their display adverts to the point that it’s no longer worth the effort required to scroll through ads to find the content, which has also been sensationalized to compete with the content posted on social media by users desperate to expand their own audience by any means available-- including slop of every description.

These perverse incentives have created a media monster, seeking revenues and profits not by creating content of self-evident value (what was labeled DBI in the traditional media--dull but important) but by following social media down the wormhole of sensationalized click-bait, “lifestyle” fluff and “sponsored content,” i.e. promotional content commercial interests pay to place in high-visibility niches folded into other content.

The traditional media prided itself on maintaining implicit standards of integrity and objectivity in reporting. These standards have largely been abandoned or debauched in favor of raw partisanship or click-bait sensationalism. As circulation and advert revenues decline, traditional media has responded by segmenting content subscriptions to milk more income out of subscribers: want to read the sports section? That’s an extra subscription now.

In effect, a Monster Id of self-reinforcing perverse incentives is gathering strength with every click, every data point collected and every unseen algorithmic adjustment of the addictive dosage. As longtime correspondent Peter K. noted, sensationalism, certainty and grandiose claims of hidden / profound insight all scale, as these activate our hard-wired attention receptors.

Not only are these exaggerations of marginal value; they actively misdirect and scatter our attention, fragmenting our capacity to make sound assessments and focus on matters of actual importance in planning and organizing our own lives.

Honest expressions of uncertainty and careful reporting of complex issues don’t scale.

Fostering addictions to endless scrolls of slop to maximize profits is--like a “health” system dominated by SickCare / Ultra-Processed Food cartels--the worst of all possible worlds, a world devoid of any redeeming value.

I have been a content creator / writer since 1988, and I’ve experienced every step of this devolution, from the good old days of free-lancing for mainstream media newspapers and journals with the entire Gatekeeper machinery of editors, pitches, invoices, etc., to the Wild-West early Web of blogs and independent ad-funded journalism, to the domination of search and social media platforms and the present near-total reliance of creators on subscribers and the sales of content directly to the public.

I haven’t changed my content, even though I recognize my niche doesn’t scale, and will never scale. I’m adapting to changes in distribution, but I’m sticking with standards that enable integrity and pride in my work. If this dooms me (and other creators like me) to permanent marginalization, so be it, because playing to “win” as measured by money in a realm ruled by perverse incentives is in effect selling your soul.

Any mention that souls can be nurtured by integrity or squandered for lucre dooms one to a lean-to hovel in Digital Siberia, for anything other than focusing on maximizing profits by any means available is now considered an incomprehensible form of insanity.

Of related interest:

The War