We keep going round and round on the issue and trying to hope that ethics or morality will break through, or that technology will solve the issue. But fundamentally, in almost every case - from Jack to Youtube to Soph, the underlying problem is the invisible hand of the free market. That's a real force. It doesn't have to be an evil one. But it's invisible and it's what guides the markets and the economy and thanks to things like Citizens United, the political infrastructure too.
Youtube is not incentivized to create a long term, stable platform of growth and content that works in the national interest and helps build a global market of cool inventive content. It's not even solely invested in eyballs or engagement. And neither is Twitter.
Both are incentivized to grow, as fast as possible, every quarter. No other metric matters if that one can be achieved. The CEO, the company and trhe Shareholders are equally incentivized to push for that growth. It's irrational and unsustainable and bad for the companies in the long term, but it is mandated by LAW. That is the legal obligation to the shareholders in the US. And it's a toxic, vicious cycle. It's hurting drug research. It's hurting infrastructure. In short it's hurting every long term inmvestment in the nation.
And a macrocosm and weird inversion of it is term limits or lack thereof, and politicians who are incentivized to stay elected. No matter what. No matter how they do it. No matter how bad, or disingenuous, or corrossive or damaging that might be.
So the way to fix it properly is to look at new ways to regulate and incentivize company and political behavior that don't involve autocannibalization of their companies and country.
If I had one wish, one item that I could change, it would be to kill the underlying nature of quarterly reporting and replace it with something that incentivized the CEOs and the shareholders to do good, or at least not do all this fucking evil.
