The Incentive Map of the AI Era

"Where social media is going in the AI era?" is one of the biggest open questions right now. Especially after years of backlash against doomscrolling, polarization, and hollow engagement.

Everyone’s debating whether the future should be human-only, AI-assisted, or fully AI-generated. But I think that’s the wrong question.

The real issue isn’t who makes the content, it’s why the content is being made in the first place.

Incentives decide everything: what gets created, what spreads, and how people feel after using these platforms.

Based on my view of the market, you can map out all the incumbent and emerging social media platforms across two dimensions:

• Who is creating the content (from human-generated to AI-generated)

• What’s being monetized (from value to eyeballs)

Once you look at it that way, a few clear patterns emerge.

On the bottom left are the familiar names: Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit. All powered by UGC and monetizing eyeballs.

I call this group the Attention Platforms.

We’re also seeing new players like BeReal and Bluesky, both UGC-based and ad-supported, each with a small twist on identity. But they still operate within the same attention economy.

Every design choice is meant to keep you scrolling.

It works, but at a cost: burnout, polarization, and diminishing creativity.

Bottom right are the Synthetic Attention Platforms.

AI-generated content at infinite scale. Platforms like Sora 2 are racing to become the “TikTok of the AI age.”

But it’s still the same game, the same engagement-based incentives, just played faster and louder.

The AI content race is the biggest trend right now.

As major players move from the bottom left to the bottom right, they’re shifting from Human Attention to Synthetic Attention without changing the underlying incentives.

The race itself isn’t wrong, but without that incentive shift, it only amplifies what’s already broken.

Now, the top half of the map tells a different story.

Top left are Substack, Medium, and Mastodon, which I call Human Value Platforms.

They reward ownership, learning, and meaningful connection.

And top right are the AI-Augmented Value Platforms.

This is the quadrant not many are building for yet, where AI helps people explore, learn, and grow, not just consume.

That’s where the next big opportunity lies.

The real problem with social media has never been that we need more or faster content.

It’s that the underlying business model still rewards attention over value.

We need a new incentive system, one that monetizes the value it creates for users.

And the decision of what kind of value a platform chooses to monetize is the most important design choice it can make.

That’s what we’re solving with Up My Mojo building systems that reward curiosity, depth, and growth.

Curious how others think about the direction social media is going.