Sez Us, a social app based by Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, is making an attempt to construct a platform without rage-bait.
Rage-bait refers to any posts which can be meant to stoke controversy. This is perhaps an deliberately controversial political take, or it may be an entirely fabricated situation designed to farm engagement (for instance, a satirical creator received 1.5 million views on a TikTok the place she claims to file for divorce after her husband booed Taylor Swift).
Most present social networking apps incentivize rage-bait, together with Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube. These platforms have packages for creators that pay them based mostly on what number of views they get, and enraging content material tends to attract extra consideration.
Sez Us desires to interrupt this cycle by permitting customers to fee different customers’ posts for approval, affect, insightfulness, relevance, and politeness. The hope is that customers will assume twice earlier than inciting an argument or making inflammatory statements; as an alternative, the thought is to encourage civil discourse.
Altering the character of the social web is less complicated mentioned than completed, and Sez Us could also be extra of a characteristic than a product. However that doesn’t imply different platforms can’t be taught from these experiments in community-driven moderation.