The attention economy

The platforms that promised to democratize ixnformation may be killing democracy instead. Andrew MacDougall joins Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy to explain why.

This week on Craft Politics: Andrew MacDougall, former director of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and author of a new paper for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, makes the case that the attention economy isn't just gutting traditional media — it's making serious politics impossible.

We discuss:

Free speech, not free reach. Andrew's not against people saying what they want. He's against platforms algorithmically boosting content to millions with zero accountability — and why that distinction matters more than any content moderation debate

The vegetable versus the dessert table. News has never had to compete with everything else for your attention before. Now a local paper in Doncaster has to out-perform Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, and a thousand TikTok videos just to get read

Why Keir Starmer can't govern. Boring competence doesn't scale in an environment designed to reward outrage. Andrew argues the platforms have made strategy impossible and handed the advantage to people like Trump and Farage who live for the next dopamine hit

The doorstep where facts died. Andrew Percy tells the story of an older voter who told him her opinion on migration — which was factually wrong — and when he corrected her as her sitting MP, she replied: "Well, that's just my opinion." How does democracy survive that?

An engagement-based tax. One of Andrew's policy proposals: tax platforms not on revenue, but on frequency of user interaction. A 30-minute BBC documentary on YouTube? Two hits. A thousand TikTok videos? A thousand hits. Make the harm visible

Why your kids shouldn't have smartphones. Andrew has two daughters, nine and six. They're not getting smartphones. He's prepared to be the most hated parent in the room — and explains why most parents, when pressed, agree with him

Read Andrew MacDougall's paper for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute: https://macdonaldlaurier.ca

00:00 Welcome and introducing Andrew
02:37 Defining the attention economy — Why our most precious resource is under siege
04:34 The addiction pathway — How platforms use dopamine to keep us scrolling
06:00 Misinformation and trivialization — The content crisis destroying democracy
09:01 The impossible challenge of modern political communication
15:19 How traditional media inadvertently created this monster
16:32 Free speech versus free reach — The crucial distinction
20:20 The death of facts — When opinions trump demonstrable truth
23:30 Making platforms pay — Why we need to become customers, not products
27:17 The engagement-based tax — A novel solution to platform addiction
31:39 Protecting kids from digital harm — The case for age verification and smartphone bans
36:31 Technology for good versus technology for profit — Finding the balance
41:39 Wrap and the hypocrisy acknowledgment — We're all whores to the algorithm