The Cobra Effect 101

How the Metric becomes the Monster

The British once tried to solve a cobra problem in Delhi and ended up with more cobras than ever before.

Picture this: It's the 1800s in colonial India, and Delhi has a serious cobra problem.

Venomous snakes are slithering through markets, hiding in homes, making life dangerous for everyone.

The British officials devise what seems like a brilliant solution - they'll pay locals for every dead cobra brought to them.

Simple. Clean. Effective.

At first, it works beautifully. Cobra corpses pile up at government offices. Officials pat themselves on the back.

Just look at all these dead cobras!

But then something unexpected happens.

Enterprising locals realize there's good money in dead cobras. So they start breeding them. Why hunt dangerous wild snakes when you can raise them safely in cages? 

Soon, cobra farms spring up across the city.

When officials finally catch on, they immediately cancel the bounty program.

And what do all those cobra farmers do?

They release their now-worthless snakes into the wild. Delhi ends up with more cobras than it started with.

Fast forward to today, and we're doing the exact same thing with social media.

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Facebook wanted "engagement." Twitter wanted "interactions." YouTube wanted "watch time." They built their entire systems to maximize these metrics, rewarding content that scored high.

Just like those cobra farmers in Delhi, content creators learned the game.

Why create thoughtful content when outrage gets more clicks?

Why share balanced perspectives when extreme views drive more comments?

Why post something uplifting when doom and gloom keep people scrolling?

The metric became the monster.

Now we're drowning in digital cobras - clickbait headlines, rage-bait posts, conspiracy theories, and endless doom-scrolling content.

Social media platforms succeeded in maximizing engagement. They just destroyed public discourse in the process.

This is the Cobra Effect - when a solution creates a worse problem than the one it was meant to solve. It happens because we focus on first-order thinking (dead cobras = fewer cobras) and ignore second-order effects (what happens when people can profit from dead cobras?).

The British officials never asked, "Then what?"

Social media executives never asked, "What kind of content will this reward?"

They measured what was easy to measure. They rewarded what was easy to reward. And they created monsters.

Before you implement any solution, any metric, any incentive system, ask yourself:

  • What behavior will this actually encourage?

  • How will people game this system?

  • What monster might I be creating?

Sometimes the best solution is to do nothing at all. Because at least then you won't be paying people to breed cobras.

What metrics are you chasing that might be breeding cobras in your own life?

ICYMI

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See you next week

Cheers

Ayush and Aditi