Articles - Social Protocols

What Is a Social Protocol? 2024-12-10

by Jonathan Warden

Introduction The rules that determine what gets attention on social platforms are often called “algorithms,” but algorithms are only part of the story. Another way to understand social platforms is as social protocols, or sets of formal and informal rules that groups use to allocate their collective attention.

What Deserves Our Attention? 2023-05-01

by Jonathan Warden

Every online community has rules that determine how the attention of the community is directed. For example in an online forum, the most up-voted posts may be shown on at the top of the page.

by Jonathan Warden

Introduction Quadratic funding has received a lot of attention recently as a mechanism for funding public goods. The Gitcoin grants program alone has distributed over $59M through QF funding rounds as of January 20241.

by Jonathan Warden

Introduction: Scalable Group Decision-Making A deliberative consensus protocol is a process that online groups can use to make decisions. It’s designed to produce good decisions that are fair and manifest the collective intelligence of the group.

by Jonathan Warden

UPDATE: See a discussion of this article on Hacker News.

Introduction

Bridging-Based Ranking is a way of scoring and ranking online content that bridges divides.

The term “Bridging-Based Ranking” was introduced in this essay by Aviv Ovadya of the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center. In his essay Ovadya explains how social media algorithms today tend to promote polarization and division. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of promoting divisive comment that triggers people’s tribal instincts, couldn’t the algorithms help find and promote areas of common ground?

by Jonathan Warden

Introduction In my article on Understanding Community Notes, I describe the basic Matrix Factorization algorithm used to identify notes that are helpful despite user polarization. In this article, I introduce a way to break this algorithm and describe an variation of the algorithm that uses 2-factor Matrix factorization.

Human Alignment Technology 2023-06-02

by Felix Dietze

Human alignment, the process of establishing shared understanding among individuals, is crucial for effective collaboration and organization. It is essential for civilizations to flourish.

The Law of Attention 2021-09-13

by Jonathan Warden

In this article, I argue that we can apply game theory to explain and control the behaviors that dominate in an online community. Not only can game theory explain why misinformation and abuse are so common in social platforms, it can be used to design social platforms that will be filled with honest, informed, civil, and behavior.

Truthtelling Games 2021-09-12

by Jonathan Warden

In this article, I will use game theory to explain why, under certain conditions, otherwise dishonest Internet people will behave with scrupulous honesty, and how social platforms can be intentionally engineered to create these conditions.

Give Truth the Advantage 2021-09-08

by Jonathan Warden

Everyone knows that the infamous social media algorithms promote the spread of false and misleading information on the Internet. But could they be engineered to do the opposite?

The Deliberative Poll 2020-11-08

by Jonathan Warden

A deliberative poll measures the informed opinion of a group of people who have participated in a discussion about the topic of the poll. This essay introduces a method for integrating deliberative polling into online discussions in social platforms, in order to discover the informed opinion of a group.