Public Utility Idea: Spam filter for web content.
The current quality of online content suffers because of link-bait and other intentionally dishonest content that drives controversy. This content is rewarded because advertisers care about page views, not the quality of the response. An outraged visitor is just as profitable as a happy visitor. Facebook doesn’t have a dislike button. It weighs Comments and Likes. A terrible story that draws condemnation with tons of content is successful content.
What if there was something like gmail’s spam filter, but for links. People could opt in to it. Some number of people would need to see the content and flag it as bad, and then you don’t have to see it. Maybe it only uses your friends opinions so that it’s more relevant.
Question: What’s the right growth hack to get this to sufficient penetration that it becomes useful? Which group of people is sufficiently pissed off to become motivated to sign up and use this? What’s the right monetization model to make this sustainable? Is there a big player now in the market who’s incentivized to do this?