Online Social Networks: Approval by Design

Matthew Ellman ()

No 17-18, Working Papers from NET Institute

Abstract: Online social networks (OSN) influence the transmission of information in society. This paper analyzes how a profit-motivated OSN designs the instant feedback options, such as “likes†or up-votes and down-votes or disapprovals, that it aggregates into user ratings, and how these design choices affect social and economic outcomes. The OSN seeks to maximize advertising revenues via maximal engagement. We compare OSN designs that allow users to only up-vote other users' content contributions or “posts†against OSN designs that allow both up and down votes. Users care about what others think of them. The feedback system mediates what users with imperfect private signals learn about each others' contributions and about each other. The OSN design affects both the expected social approval gains from engaging as a contributor and the value to users from engaging as viewers of others' content. Up and down votes improve viewers information but removing the down-vote option can raise user willingness to contribute content by reducing the threat of unambiguous disapproval. We investigate a full set of OSN designs in a range of social contexts.

Keywords: Online social networks; feedback design; user-generated content; quality; rating systems; platform economics; media economics. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L13 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2017-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-ict, nep-ind, nep-mkt, nep-pay and nep-soc
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