Why we’re building Spread
It is no secret that social media is broken and needs a redesign
Today’s social media platforms rely on eyeballs and ad revenue. We all know that this architecture drives algorithmic amplification of the worst of the worst content. Who doesn’t feel like social media leaves them feeling unhappy, or at the very least mind-numbingly unproductive and detached?
The societal impact is becoming more clear every day. Teen depression, rising suicide rates, political polarization, and never ending hate-filled shouting are just a few of the negative influences of social media. But it gets worse. As platforms get better at perfectly personalizing feeds to addict users, it’s easy to look at spending time on social media today as one of the most anti-social activities we can choose. If we think things are bad now, wait until the floods of synthetic AI-generated content start to drown every interaction we have online. Today’s social products are deliberately designed to lure us into endless scrolling — it’s a mental hijacking and we’ve had enough.
How can social media be fixed? Our answer is that people deserve to be informed in ways that spark real conversations and productive dialogue.
We’re on a mission to enable access to the ideas that matter.
So we built Spread as a way to redesign how people can share and access what’s actually interesting and important. How do we define what’s interesting and important? We believe that the people you trust are the best source of information, not some misguided algorithm that aims to maximize user engagement through enragement.
Spread is the platform for superior discovery and productive information gathering. How? We’re cutting out the worst aspects of User Generated Content (UGC). It’s as simple as that, no free form UGC meant to provoke, no likes, no upvotes, and no free-for-all comment sections. Rather, on Spread you simply share what you’re reading, listening to, or watching and easily discover what everyone else is too.
So…what are you reading, listening to, and watching?
Human progress requires healthy, and yes, argumentative dialogue. We believe humans are genetically curious and that objective knowledge is inherently social. So what better way to plant the seeds for productive knowledge gathering and dialogue than to guide your media diet based on what others you trust are reading, listening to, and watching. Even better, take a look at what the people you disagree with are spreading and learn from that too. Stay curious and informed across your circles so you can elevate the conversations you have in the real world. Think about someone you admire or just someone you’d like to have lunch with, don’t you want to know what they’re reading, listening to, and watching?
If the answer is yes, join the movement of Spreaders piercing through information overload with real human recommendations.
