- June 17, 2021
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Business
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With congressional hearings and negative public opinion, pressure is mounting for social media companies to change some of their practices. Concerns range from how to regulate speech and stop the spread of misinformation, to whether and how to address antitrust issues, and how to balance data privacy and company transparency.
The business models of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are at the heart of the issue. In an “attention economy,” platforms are free but sell user attention to brands, governments, and non-governmental organizations, according to MIT Sloan professorSinan Aral, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and host of the recent Social Media Summit @ MIT.
Business models that rely on the attention economy are effective, but pose many concerns.
“Does the attention economy inevitably lead to the spread of least common…
