Do you remember the early euphoria surrounding social media? We were promised a revolution that would remake politics and overthrow corrupt systems. Instead, we seem to have ended up in a digital Thunderdome.

In this video, I use a fundamental idea from economics to understand exactly what went wrong: the distinction between public and private goods. Just as a game of tennis requires shared rules to function, a shared online culture is the operating system of our online discourse. But culture is a public good. And in building that good the tech giants put private profit ahead of public good, fostering tribalism rather than meaningful connection.

However, the internet does not have to be a hellscape. By contrasting the chaos of social media with the surprising stability of Wikipedia, we can begin to see how to design institutions that amplify the better angels of our nature rather than our worst instincts. And that sets us up to ask the next question. What is Wikipedia’s online culture, and why does it work so much better - a subject we take up in our next video.

▶ Enjoy the next episode on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ or Spotify next week

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