  Social media feed algorithms are designed to optimize online social
engagements for the purpose of maximizing advertising profits, and therefore
have an incentive to promote controversial posts including misinformation. By
thinking about misinformation as information pollution, we can draw parallels
with environmental policy for countering pollution such as carbon taxes.
Similar to pollution, a Pigouvian tax on misinformation provides economic
incentives for social media companies to control the spread of misinformation
more effectively to avoid or reduce their misinformation tax, while preserving
some degree of freedom in platforms' response. In this paper, we highlight a
bird's eye view of a Pigouvian misinformation tax and discuss the key questions
and next steps for implementing such a taxing scheme.
