A new social app is fighting rage-bait

Sez Us, a social app founded by Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, is trying to build a platform without rage-bait.

Rage-bait refers to any posts that are intended to stoke controversy. This might be an intentionally controversial political take, or it can be a wholly fabricated scenario designed to farm engagement (e.g., a satirical creator got 1.5 million views on a TikTok where she claims to file for divorce after her husband booed Taylor Swift).

Most existing social networking apps incentivize rage-bait, including Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube. These platforms have programs for creators that pay them based on how many views they get, and enraging content tends to draw more attention.

Sez Us wants to break this cycle by allowing users to rate other users’ posts for approval, influence, insightfulness, relevance, and politeness. The hope is that users will think twice before inciting an argument or making inflammatory statements; instead, the idea is to encourage civil discourse.

Changing the nature of the social internet is easier said than done, and Sez Us may be more of a feature than a product. But that doesn’t mean other platforms can’t learn from these experiments in community-driven moderation.