Tokenization of social media engagements increases the sharing of false (and other) news but penalization moderates it
Authors: M Alizadeh, E Hoes, F Gilardi
Published: 2025
Publication: Scientific Reports, 2023 - nature.com
Token-based incentives for social media engagement increase the sharing of misinformation, but implementing penalties for objectionable content can reduce this trend without fully eliminating it.
Methods: Survey experiment analyzing the impact of hypothetical token rewards and penalties on user willingness to share different types of news content.
Key Findings: Effect of token-based incentives and penalties on user engagement and the willingness to share misinformation.
Limitations: Study relied on hypothetical scenarios rather than real-world implementation of tokenized engagements, and the findings may not fully capture the complexity of user behavior on decentralized platforms.
Institution: Department of Marketing, University of Amsterdam, Department of Social Sciences, Università Degli Studi di Milano, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Università Degli Studi di Milano
Research Area: Social media, Misinformation, Computational Social Science
Discipline: Computational Social Science
Citations: 20
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40716-2