A new social app is fighting rage-bait
Sez Us, a social app based by Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, is attempting to construct a platform without rage-bait.
Rage-bait refers to any posts which might be meant to stoke controversy. This could be an deliberately controversial political take, or it may be an entirely fabricated situation designed to farm engagement (e.g., a satirical creator acquired 1.5 million views on a TikTok the place she claims to file for divorce after her husband booed Taylor Swift).
Most current social networking apps incentivize rage-bait, together with Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube. These platforms have applications for creators that pay them primarily based 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 a substitute, the thought is to encourage civil discourse.
Altering the character of the social web is simpler stated than achieved, and Sez Us could also be extra of a function than a product. However that doesn’t imply different platforms can’t study from these experiments in community-driven moderation.
