uptrusting

"Just think critically" assumes the information environment is neutral and only your processing is flawed. The information environment is adversarial. Your critical thinking is the only defense the system didn't account for. Is that sustainable?

Journalists used to decide what was news. Then algorithms did. Journalists had biases - biases can be checked. Algorithms have incentives - incentives are structural. You can't fact-check an engagement algorithm into prioritizing truth. Gotta build something else.

Once provocation is the path to influence, polarization follows: people pick teams, nuance becomes betrayal, questioning your own side gets you canceled. What if credibility was the path to influence instead? What behavior would that produce?

No universal trust score on UpTrust. No central authority. Your trust network is yours. Trust someone on climate and not economics - someone else has the reverse. The system actually respects that complexity.

Nobody opens social media hoping to feel worse. And yet. The gap between what you want from the platform and what the platform wants from you - worth thinking about.

Content moderation is playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms of a ranking problem. You can ban bad actors all day. The algorithm will manufacture new ones by tomorrow because the incentive to be outrageous remains intact. Gotta change what the system rewards.

Echo chambers aren't caused by choosing your bubble. The algorithm shows you what your bubble agrees with because agreement = engagement. What if a mechanism found the person trusted by both sides? Not your enemy - your most credible challenger.

The best information you've ever received came from someone you trust. Not someone with the most followers. Not someone who went viral. Someone whose judgment you respect. Why isn't your feed built that way?

You trust different people on different topics. Your mechanic on cars, your doctor on health, your friend on restaurants. Social media flattens all of that into one undifferentiated feed ranked by clicks. Why? What if a platform actually respected that complexity?

Live AMA with @waitbutwhy on uptrusting.com

Rob Miles isn't worried about chatbots. The thing that changes everything is agents - AI that doesn't just answer questions but takes actions in the world. A wrong answer is an inconvenience. A wrong action is irreversible.

Adrian Grenier on the shift that made fatherhood real: 'You realize you're not just a man. You're a family, a neighborhood, a kingdom.' Boy psychology asks what can I get. The version that comes after asks what can I build that outlasts me.

'AI builds the next AI' stopped being a thought experiment. Jeffrey Ladish on the moment the feedback loop went from theoretical to planned - and why the coordination window is shorter than most people realize.

Your feed rewards the loudest reaction, not the most accurate one. That's not a people problem. It's a ranking problem. Change the ranking from engagement to trust and the same humans have a completely different conversation. uptrusting.com

Most founders don't start out evil. They start out idealistic - then they build a machine that outgrows their control. Eric Ries calls it the Frankenstein problem. You assembled the monster from good intentions and fiduciary duty. Now it runs you. uptrusting.com/hey-wait

Your feed shows you content that makes you angry because angry users generate 3x the engagement of calm ones, and engagement is what sells ads. That's the business model! you're buying!

Every platform sorts your feed by one question: did this make them click? Not "is this true" or "is this worth your time." Just clicks. There's a different question you could ask — would anyone bet their name on it? Nobody's asking that yet (except us)

@WHLeavitt Politicians moderate when they need votes, then revert when they don't. The cycle works because by the time you notice, the next election already reset your expectations. This is why trust can't be performed on demand.

Obama: Dems need to clean up homeless tent cities. Hillary: End mass migration, secure borders. Dems moderating for 2026 midterms. Can the GOP win the 2026 midterms? A. Yes B. No

@WallStreetApes This tweet performs outrage about a bill that won't pass to collect followers who feel unheard. The mechanism: politicians need engagement more than legislation, so they propose symbolic bans instead of fixing actual immigration processing. You're the product.

Congressman Brandon Gill says we must pass his new bill ‘The Somalia Immigration Moratorium Act’ This bill imposes a 25-year moratorium on immigration from Somalia to the United States “Does Somali immigration benefit the American people? The answer is clearly no” “Again, that's not a racial comment. There's nothing bigoted to say that. It's just a simple fact — We ought to say very clearly that if it's not benefiting the American people, why do we allow it?”

@LizaRosen0000 Binary polling on immigration policy gets engagement because it forces tribal sorting. You pick a side, the algorithm shows your answer to people who'll fight you. The poll isn't measuring opinion, it's manufacturing it.

Despite accusations of "xenophobia" and "Islamophobia" from Muslims and leftists, Italy's PM Giorgia Meloni says Italy will show "zero tolerance" for illegal immigrants. Do you support her harsh stance against illegal immigration? Yes or No?