Year: 2023
Type: preprint
Abstract: Social media feed algorithms are designed to optimize online social engagements for the purpose of maximizing advertising profits, and therefore have an incentive to promote controversial posts including misinformation. By thinking about misinformation as information pollution, we can draw parallels with environmental policy for countering pollution such as carbon taxes. Similar to pollution, a Pigouvian tax on misinformation provides economic incentives for social media companies to control the spread of misinformation more effectively to avoid or reduce their misinformation tax, while preserving some degree of freedom in platforms' response. In this paper, we highlight a bird's eye view of a Pigouvian misinformation tax and discuss the key questions and next steps for implementing such a taxing scheme.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Kazemi, Ashkan, Mihalcea, Rada
Institution: University of Michigan
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4381826729