Designing a better reading experience with Matter: A Primer on Prediction Markets

Designing a better reading experience with Matter: A Primer on Prediction Markets

In today's digital age, reading online has become a complex process that involves multiple behaviors. From deciding what to read, to the act of reading, and what we do with the knowledge after we read, it's a journey that requires careful consideration. As someone who has been a top 1% Pocket user for a decade, I understand the importance of read-it-later apps. However, the first generation of these apps lacked certain features like prioritization, resurfacing, and decay. This led me to co-found Matter with my partner, Rob Mackenzie, another avid Pocket user.

When designing Matter, we wanted to focus on the needs that won't change over time, just like Jeff Bezos emphasizes. Customers will always want faster delivery, and in the same vein, the supply of great content will continue to rise while attention remains scarce. Trust plays a crucial role in deciding what to read, and we believe that people trust people. This is why we decided to elevate writers as first-class citizens in our system. Good curation is incredibly valuable, helping users find hidden gems that engagement-based algorithms often overlook.

While the internet is dominated by new content, we recognize that the majority of the best stuff ever written or produced was not created in the past week. We understand the importance of delivering relevant and manageable content to our users. It's a challenging problem to solve, but we're excited to work on it. Moreover, we believe that we're in the golden age of newsletters. However, traditional email inboxes are not optimized for reading, and we want to change that. We're exploring the use of highly reliable parsing techniques, such as NLP and computer vision, to enhance the user experience.

Additionally, audio consumption has become increasingly popular, driven by convenient hardware. To cater to this trend, we introduced a feature called "audio highlights," allowing users to highlight while listening without needing to open their phones. This enhances the reading experience for those who prefer auditory learning.

Matter also focuses on providing a visually intuitive experience. We introduced minimaps, inspired by video games and code editors. This feature allows users to scan headers and navigate quickly. It's particularly effective on mobile devices, and we believe it will be even more impressive on desktop web.

Our core users, whom we call "active" readers, are intentional about their reading habits. They curate their information diets, have favorite writers, and subscribe to newsletters. Our goal is to increase the return on investment of reading. We want to help people gain more insight, knowledge, and thrill from the time they invest in reading.

Now, let's shift our focus to prediction markets and their role in governance. In a Futarchy, governments can combine democratic voting on metrics to optimize for and prediction markets to inform how to reach those goals. This system merges the Wisdom of Crowds with the Efficient Capital Markets hypothesis, which asserts that asset prices reflect all available information, providing the best estimate of intrinsic value.

Futarchy offers a solution to the economic problem of society. Rather than relying on a single mind to solve problems based on given resources, Futarchy aims to secure the best use of resources known to any member of society. It leverages the utilization of knowledge, which may not be available to any individual in its totality. By introducing prediction markets, we create truth-seeking machines. Participants are incentivized to be correct rather than popular or diplomatic, as they have to back their beliefs with their money.

Prediction markets have the potential to aggregate more information, leading to stronger governance and management. They provide a market for truth-telling politicians, contrasting the current system where politicians often prioritize popularity over truth. The powerful entities in society, such as wealthy families, leading corporations, and political leaders, typically drive change. However, Futarchy challenges this norm by introducing a market-driven approach that can potentially disrupt the status quo.

Implementing prediction markets comes with its own set of challenges. The cost of running and maintaining markets is a major factor to consider. Additionally, ensuring the clarity of markets and associated outcomes is essential. Decentralized prediction markets raise questions about proving the occurrence of outcomes. A proliferation of markets could lead to a future where everyone operates under monetary incentives, potentially making the future deterministic.

In conclusion, both designing a better reading experience with Matter and exploring the potential of prediction markets offer unique insights into improving information consumption and governance. To enhance the reading experience, we should prioritize features like prioritization, resurfacing, and decay in read-it-later apps. Trusting people and incorporating good curation can help users discover valuable content. Emphasizing the importance of non-new content and providing audio and visual enhancements can further enhance the reading experience.

When it comes to governance, prediction markets can revolutionize decision-making by incentivizing truth-seeking behavior. Futarchy introduces a market-driven approach that could disrupt the traditional power dynamics and encourage more accurate estimations of the consequences of important decisions. However, challenges related to cost, clarity, and decentralization need to be addressed.

Three actionable advice for designing a better reading experience:

1. Incorporate features like prioritization, resurfacing, and decay in read-it-later apps to help users make better decisions about what to read.
2. Elevate writers as first-class citizens in the system to build trust and prioritize good curation.
3. Explore audio and visual enhancements to cater to different modes of consumption and provide a more immersive reading experience.

Three actionable advice for implementing prediction markets:

1. Evaluate the cost of running and maintaining markets to ensure feasibility.
2. Focus on the clarity of markets and associated outcomes to provide accurate information.
3. Address the challenges of decentralization by developing methods to prove outcomes and mitigate potential deterministic future scenarios.