Free will is the idea that as individuals, we have control over our decisions and our actions.

Our decisions are influenced by many factors. Some of the major influences include our feelings, our experiences, and our thought processes. Depending on the situation, different factors dominate in the decision making process.

The attention economy is the the dynamic that results from the ability for businesses to profit off of access to the public’s attention.

Incentives are rewards and punishments that encourage certain behavior while discouraging other behavior. In the attention economy, producers have incentives to hold consumers’ attention since their income depends on how many people they can reach.

We are still watching the results play out, but so far, we have watched the companies that collect lots of information on their users succeed. This information is referred to as consumer data. Companies use consumer data to create individualized feeds with targeted advertisements. In the attention economy, the more consumer data a company has, the more successful it is, so companies begin to compete for access to consumer data, which can result in addictive algorithms.

Something is deterministic when it is the result of something else. A cause and effect relationship is a simple example of deterministic outcomes. Every time the cause occurs, the effect will follow, like lightning and thunder.

No, something can be practically unpredictable while still operating deterministically. For example, an artificial intelligence program operates deterministically, but it is so complex that we cannot reliably predict its outputs. Just because we cannot predict the results does not mean the program does not operate deterministically.

In light of the incentives that exist for social media companies operating in the attention economy, negative outcomes are inevitable. Social media platforms can be rewarded for hosting false information that lead people to misunderstand what is happening in the real world. Additionally, social media companies can control the information their users are exposed to, leading to political division. To fix these issues, social media companies have tried banning users, but this only raises more concerns because people believe it violates their right to freedom of speech. Since social media companies cannot fix these issues themselves, it is worth considering government regulation.

In the video, I propose several options. One option is to regulate the algorithms that are in charge of curating a user’s feed. Currently, social media companies are rewarded for showing users content that simply maintains their attention. If we created regulation that prevented social media companies from putting ads in a user’s algorithm generated feed (i.e. Instagram’s Reels and TikTok’s For You Page), social media companies may no longer have an incentive to simply hold a user’s attention. Their ads would instead be placed in a user’s following page, which would mean the companies could no longer profit off of their ability to recommend content, potentially limiting the spread of false information and limiting the control of the algorithm over what we see.

The network effect is the idea that the more people use something, the more useful it becomes.

A monopoly is when a company takes actions to intentionally limit competition. A natural monopoly is when a company limits competition unintentionally. Natural monopolies occur where competition is inefficient. In the video, I give the example of several different competing subway lines that go along the same route. Such competition would be wasteful, which is why NYC has the MTA, which is an example of a natural monopoly.

Social media companies could be considered natural monopolies given the results of the network effect. Since both users and content creators benefit from more users being on an app, people tend to gravitate towards a few dominant apps that do slightly different things.