Since Effective Altruism is about finding the most effective ways to benefit society, here is perhaps an opportunity to bring about massive change - by transforming the internet.
Yes, I know “transforming the internet” sounds like a daunting (or “impossible”) task, but I promise that what I'm proposing here is actually sensible, very achievable, and absolutely necessary (especially if we want to effectively counteract the hatred and polarization we see on social media today and restore trust in media) – so here we go:
What I’m proposing is a tool (and platform) that would allow anyone see the credibility of all online content, and a new business model for digital content that is based on the credibility and importance of content – the more high quality credible content you post, the more money (digital currency) you can make – you can find out more about how this new platform (called the New Internet) works here: https://youtu.be/fWbqsDp1OoI
So how will the New Internet Platform benefit society?
- The New Internet will allow everyone evaluate the credibility of all online content. This will not only make people better informed about the news, but also help them make better decisions regarding health, finance, science, nutrition and so on. It will also compel content creators to produce credible content of high quality (instead of focusing on ratings for ad revenue, in the current ratings-based business model for content, which comes at the expense of reporting the facts).
- The new business model that the New Internet Platform is based on will allow journalists and other content creators to make money directly by making high quality reliable content. This will help reverse the decline in journalism (particularly, investigative journalism), and restore public trust in journalism.
- It will promote civil discourse and reduce polarization in society. So many “debates” and arguments we see on social media today are made in bad faith – either with the goal of gaining more “followers” and “likes” from “our side,” or for promoting corporate interests by paid spokespeople. Today’s social media is structured to promote polarization in society. On the New Internet Platform people will have the incentive to debate in good faith, since their credibility rating (and therefore, their ability to make money) depends on their honesty.
- It will also allow researchers and scientists make money directly by publishing their findings (ie. the more beneficial to society their findings are, the more money they’ll make) and make these findings available to everyone for free. This means that the quality of scientific and medical literature will improve, since researchers will have the incentive to report their findings as accurately as possible (instead of trying to create sensational headlines to drive ratings, which only hurts science in the public’s eye). It will also compel researchers to make all their experiment results public – not just the “significant” results (much can be learned from “failed” experiments, but such data rarely becomes public since it’s not likely to get much ratings).
- It will greatly benefit science and medicine, by showing the connections between all of human knowledge. Unlike Google’s algorithms, that rank results based on ratings (which then helps Google generate ad revenue), the New Internet Platform will rank results purely based on the relevance and credibility of the information. This will allow any person quickly get a good sense of the body of research relevant to any particular topic, and the level of reliability of any given article in the field (today people can easily become overwhelmed by studying any given topic in science or medicine, because it’s not easy to tell what information is reliable and what is made up)
- No ads, no trolls, no clickbait – since the New Internet Platform is based on a new business model for digital content, many of the annoyances we have to deal with on the internet today will be greatly reduced or eliminated.
These are just some of the benefits we can get if we develop the New Internet Platform. This Platform has to be based on open source (so no one can claim it has some bias in how it evaluates individual credibility scores), and available as a public good (it will be able to “pay for itself” once it is operational).
But this cannot happen without people who are willing to contribute their time and knowledge in developing and promoting it. So if you’re interested in transforming the internet, please join the New Information Revolution!
