Purpose: Stop calling platforms “public squares.” They’re auction systems for visibility.
Output format: Assessment → Confidence (low/med/high) → Next action
[screen 1]
Auction, Not Newsroom
Feeds allocate visibility. Visibility is scarce. Scarcity creates an auction, explicit or not.
When you open a social media app, you’re not entering a town square where everyone has equal voice. You’re entering an auction house where visibility goes to the highest bidder — sometimes in money, sometimes in engagement, sometimes in platform alignment.
Understanding this changes how you think about information spread.
[screen 2]
The Fuel Problem
Outrage is cheap to produce and expensive to ignore.
In engagement-driven auctions, content that triggers strong emotion performs better. Not because platforms are evil, but because that’s what the incentive structure rewards.
Outrage, fear, moral indignation, schadenfreude — these are high-octane fuels in the attention economy. Nuance, complexity, and uncertainty are low-grade.
The auction favors the inflammatory. This is structural, not conspiratorial.
[screen 3]
What’s Being Auctioned
Not “speech.” Visibility.
The commodities:
- Recommendation slots (algorithmic promotion)
- Trending space (concentrated attention)
- Search rank (discovery positioning)
- “For You” placement (personalized visibility)
- Ad adjacency (brand association)
These are scarce resources allocated by platform decision. The rules of allocation determine what spreads.
[screen 4]
Who Bids
Multiple actors compete in this auction:
Creators bid with content
- High-engagement posts win more visibility
- Gaming the algorithm is rational behavior
- Outrage works, so outrage proliferates
Advertisers bid with money
- Direct payment for placement
- Programmatic systems often content-blind
- Money can override organic signals
Platforms bid with product goals
- Editorial choices baked into algorithms
- “Integrity interventions” as visibility allocation
- Decisions about what to demote or remove
Everyone is bidding. The rules favor some bids over others.
[screen 5]
Externalities: The Hidden Bill
The auction produces spillovers that bidders don’t pay for:
Polarization: Extreme content fragments shared reality Harassment: Engagement-driven visibility enables pile-ons Institutional distrust: Constant controversy erodes confidence Moderation burnout: Human reviewers absorb psychological costs
These are real costs. They’re paid by others. They’re not priced into the auction.
This is why pure market solutions fail: the market doesn’t include the people who pay the costs.
[screen 6]
Industrial Reach Principle
Here’s the key distinction:
Speech is cheap. Anyone can say anything. This has always been true.
Scaled distribution is industrial. Reaching millions requires infrastructure. This is different.
Industrial things can be:
- Licensed (who can operate at scale)
- Throttled (speed limits on distribution)
- Escrowed (delayed distribution pending review)
- Taxed (costs imposed for externalities)
You can defend speech absolutely while regulating industrial distribution. These are different things.
[screen 7]
Friction Beats Lectures
Small costs at high scale change behavior faster than education ever could.
Examples:
- “Are you sure you want to share this?” prompts reduce resharing by 10-20%
- Speed bumps before posting reduce low-quality content
- Friction on monetization reduces commercial disinformation
This isn’t about preventing speech. It’s about making the auction less frictionless for harmful content.
Friction is a regulatory tool, not censorship.
[screen 8]
Monetization Is Steering
If you can’t stop spread, change what pays.
Leverage points:
- Ad revenue adjacency (don’t pay for controversial content)
- Creator fund eligibility (quality requirements)
- Recommendation inclusion (standards for algorithmic boost)
- Partnership programs (demonetization as sanction)
Most commercial disinformation follows the money. Redirect the money, redirect the content.
[screen 9]
DIM Application
When reach is the engine of harm:
Gen 4 (Moderation) + selective Gen 3 (Prebunking)
- Reduce distribution through platform mechanisms
- Don’t just debunk — understand that debunking often adds distribution
- Prebunk when you can predict the narrative
Gen 2 (Debunking) heroics often add free distribution to what you’re trying to counter. Be careful what you amplify.
[screen 10]
Practical Scenario
Situation: A health misinformation video is gaining traction. Current stats: 50,000 views, 2,000 shares, climbing. Content makes false claims about a vaccine, but is well-produced and emotionally compelling.
Your analysis task (20 minutes):
- Define the auctioned commodity (what visibility mechanism is driving spread)
- Identify 2 externalities (who pays costs not reflected in the auction)
- Propose 2 incentive levers (what could change the auction dynamics)
- Assessment + Confidence + Next action
[screen 11]
Sample Response
Auctioned commodity: Recommendation algorithm placement. Video is being served to users with health anxiety based on engagement signals.
Externalities:
- Public health system: will treat preventable illness from vaccine hesitancy
- Platform trust teams: absorbing psychological cost of reviewing harmful health content
Incentive levers:
- Demonetization: Remove ad revenue from health misinformation content
- Recommendation exclusion: Allow content to exist but exclude from algorithmic promotion
Assessment: Commercial-grade health misinformation exploiting recommendation system. High confidence on distribution mechanism, medium confidence on creator intent.
Next action: Platform report for medical misinformation policy; do not counter-message directly (would add distribution); document for potential health authority briefing.
[screen 12]
The Public Square Myth
“But platforms are the new public square!”
This framing serves platform interests. It implies:
- Regulation = censorship
- All visibility is speech
- Market outcomes are democratic
Reality:
- Platforms are businesses optimizing metrics
- Visibility is allocated by algorithm and ad spend
- Outcomes reflect platform choices, not neutral markets
You can critique regulation without accepting the public square framing. These are industrial distribution systems, not town squares.
[screen 13]
What Platforms Actually Decide
Platforms make editorial choices constantly:
- What gets recommended vs. not
- What gets monetized vs. demonetized
- What gets labeled vs. unlabeled
- What gets removed vs. stays up
- What gets slowed vs. amplified
These are editorial decisions with massive consequences. “We’re just a platform” is marketing, not description.
Understanding this is essential for effective intervention.
[screen 14]
Module Assessment
Scenario: A coordinated campaign is using a platform’s trending feature to amplify a false narrative about election fraud. The content is technically within platform rules (opinion, not verifiable false claims). It’s gaining visibility through high engagement.
Task (15 minutes):
- What’s being auctioned in this scenario?
- Who’s bidding and with what?
- What externalities are being generated?
- Propose 2 interventions that don’t involve content removal
- Assessment + Confidence + Next action
Scoring:
- Credit industrial reach framing
- Reward non-removal interventions
- Penalize “ban it all” responses without mechanism analysis
[screen 15]
Key Takeaways
- Platforms are auction systems for visibility, not public squares
- Outrage performs well because auctions reward engagement
- What’s auctioned: recommendation slots, trending space, search rank, personalized placement
- Externalities (polarization, harassment, burnout) aren’t priced into the auction
- Speech is cheap; scaled distribution is industrial — these can be regulated differently
- Friction beats lectures; small costs at scale change behavior
- Monetization is steering; redirect the money, redirect the content
- Gen 4 + selective Gen 3 when reach is the harm channel
Next Module
Continue to: Influencers vs. Troll Farms — Same ledger, different machinery. How to tell them apart and why it matters for intervention.