They turned messaging apps into status games.
These status games appeared locally positive-sum (as it costs you nothing to hand out an upvote), but were globally zero-sum (as one person’s rise on any status leaderboard is necessarily accompanied by another’s fall) (View Highlight)
Contrast this to economic games, which can appear locally zero-sum (as one person is credited money in a trade while the other is debited), while being globally positive-sum (when two parties engage in a voluntary trade it typically enriches both overall relative to the pre-trade status quo, as per the coincidence of wants). (View Highlight)
