Selling Certification, Content Moderation, and Attention

TL;DR

This paper models a platform's content moderation as a sale, where it uses certification and attention steering to optimize revenue, leading to diverse content and highlighting potential regulatory impacts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model of content moderation involving sale of certification and attention, analyzing the platform's pricing and cross-subsidization strategies.

Findings

Higher willingness-to-pay content receives better certification and more views.

Cross-subsidization can increase content diversity and consumer welfare.

Regulation enforcing accurate certification may have unintended negative effects.

Abstract

We introduce a model of content moderation for sale, where a platform can channel attention in two ways: direct steering that makes content visible to consumers and certification that controls what consumers know about the content. The platform optimally price discriminates using both instruments. Content from higher willingness-to-pay providers enjoys higher quality certification and more views. The platform cross-subsidizes content: the same certificate is assigned to content from low willingness-to-pay providers that appeals to consumers and content from higher willingness-to-pay providers that does not. Cross-subsidization can benefit consumers by making content more diverse; regulation enforcing accurate certification may be harmful.