As the global town square migrated onto social media, we learned the power of large-scale crowdsourcing. Much like the earlier information revolutions of the printing press and the newspaper, these new platforms gave ordinary people unprecedented ability to navigate information and contribute to a shared understanding of the world.
Over the past two decades, social media has become deeply influenced by advertising and the algorithmic pursuit of attention, which is not the same as the pursuit of knowledge. The result is an information environment that rewards engagement, manipulation, and compulsive behaviors much more than understanding.
As a social species, we depend on reasonably accurate perceptions of what other people believe and experience to form a worldview and orient ourselves within society. When this public lens becomes distorted, people form false impressions of reality, of one another, and of where they fit in. We would be remiss to underestimate the strain this puts on youth development, social well-being, and democracy itself, and to overestimate the incumbent platforms’ ability to self-correct.
The following principles underpin what Alt House believes is a better alternative design.
TruTake principles
Remove attention optimization and advertising.
An advertising platform is obligated to capture and hold attention, even when that is not what best serves the person using it. Time-on-screen optimization encourages compulsive consumption in passive viewers, while contributors are forced to compete for attention or risk becoming socially invisible. This pressure encourages provocation, manipulation, and reach over precision and meaning.
Build a precision instrument for reality and crowd beliefs.
Social media can create a kaleidoscope effect in public opinion, where the beliefs made most visible are not necessarily the beliefs most widely held. A better system should measure the distribution of belief with precision and give people an accurate map of what others think and experience, regardless of whether that map is entertaining to consume.
Align the economic incentive of the platform with the algorithm’s epistemic purpose.
The algorithm cannot be separated from the business model. As information platforms scale, their ranking systems will inevitably be altered by what the business needs to sustain itself. A better design aligns what the business sells with what the algorithm is meant to accomplish from the beginning, so that future economic success reinforces rather than compromises its epistemic purpose.
Build enjoyable experiences without ranking by engagement.
Engagement is not the same as enjoyment. Frustration, conflict, and confusion can produce rampant participation without producing a satisfying experience. A better design should create rewarding arcs of investigation, contribution, uncertainty, and resolution without depending on endless consumption or compulsive mechanics. Success should sometimes mean helping someone understand something well enough to leave. TruTake’s responsibility is to prove that this is possible in the context of crowdsourcing.
Pay contributors for their knowledge, not their ability to amass attention.
Much of what people know never reaches a public feed. Wisdom does not always come from the loudest voice or the largest following; it is hidden in the unknown and the overlooked. A better system should let people contribute what they know without building an audience, competing for attention, or risking their social standing. When those contributions help a community understand the world better, they should share in the economic value they helped create.