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fixing typos, adding a few links, revenue numbers for FB

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Peter Wang 2018-02-15 09:52:25 -06:00
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3 Centralized Social Media Is Broken By Design.md
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@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ Fundamentally, technology providers have to cover their costs, and make some pro
One could imagine a Facebook that was monetized entirely differently, and optimized for its users' mental health and social positivity. It could simply charge for advanced features, like sub-accounts for children with sophisticated content and friend list controls, or pay-per-message Direct Messaging like LinkedIn. More advanced control over one's profile page, and additional vanity options, could help differentiate the paying users from the non-paying ones and provide for virtue signaling. Facebook could facilitate celebrity AMAs, do sponsored FB Live broadcasts, charge commissions for Verified Seller status for repeat sellers in Marketplace, etc. etc. And lest you think that this is crazy talk, look at Reddit: they created a way for users to voluntarily pay via Reddit Gold.
At the end of the day, Facebook's ad platform makes about $5 per user per year. They could just provide an option for users to pay that directly, and shut off all participation in advertising, tracking, etc. If enough people did that, it would have neutered the Russian election propaganda attack. So when your children ask about the 2016 election, you can tell them that we sold our democracy for $5 a head.
At the end of the day, Facebook's ad platform makes about [$5 per user per quarter](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/02/facebooks-revenue-topped-5-per-user-for-the-first-time.html) (globally; in US/Canada, it's $20). They could just provide an option for users to pay that directly, and shut off all participation in advertising, tracking, etc. If enough people did that, it would have neutered the Russian election propaganda attack. So when your children ask about the 2016 election, you can tell them that we sold our democracy for $20 a head.
Despite all this hating on Facebook and Twitter, I want to make it clear that they are not the full problem. They are merely the American manifestations of the problem. Even if both were to disappear, it does nothing to help the cause of liberté and fraternité in China, which has different tech. If we're going to go through the trouble of solving this problem, we should build a universally useful information system.
@ -66,23 +66,23 @@ Content Policing Is the Inevitable Cost of Success At Scale
* When data/content is centralized, content has to get approved. Content by itself does not have a "rating". A rating or even legality is the result of interaction of content with the social field around it.
* (triggered by a notification from Google after I added some public photos that my photos will be visible after they are approved). If we have P2P content networks, then it's people and their credibility and netkarma that gets modulated, by the network of people around them.
* This thought was triggered by a notification from Google - after I added some public photos of a restaurant/location, I got notified that my photos will be visible after they are "approved". Why do I need Google's approval to share content with my friends? I don't. Google absolutely wants to be involved if I want to *publish on their broadcast platform*. If we have P2P content networks, then it's people and their credibility and net-karma that gets modulated and self-regulated, by the network of people around them. We see this in crude form on Reddit.
* https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2
"But both stories take at face value YouTube’s assertions that these results are incredibly rare and quickly removed: assertions utterly refuted by the proliferation of the stories themselves, and the growing number of social media posts, largely by concerned parents, from which they arise.”
Every communications medium is also a substrate for the reinforcement and evolution of *cultural values*. A communications medium whose business model is monetization of attention tends to fall into the trap of converting into a broadcast medium (and giving users a lottery mechanic to earn social currency - “going viral”). And once something is a broadcast medium, it inevitably takes on the task of being a tastemaker.
Every communications medium is also a substrate for the reinforcement and evolution of *cultural values*. A communications medium whose business model is monetization of attention tends to fall into the trap of converting itself into a broadcast medium (and giving users a lottery mechanic to earn social currency - “going viral”). And once something is a broadcast medium, it inevitably takes on the task of being a tastemaker. **The fact that a piece of arbitrary content can go viral should be seen as a platform bug, not a feature.** (At least, if the platform is to be designed for human social conviviality and collective sense-making.) (c.f. [Joe Edelman's writings](http://nxhx.org/) on The Convivium)
This is not something new that the Internet has brought about. Hollywood went through this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_censorship_in_the_United_States Starting with enlisting local police chiefs to censor content, it evolved into the MPAA and the Production Code. Joseph Breen and the Hays Code (1934-1960s).
This is not something new that the Internet has brought about. Hollywood went through this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_censorship_in_the_United_States Starting with enlisting local police chiefs to censor content, it evolved into the MPAA and the Production Code; Joseph Breen and the Hays Code (1934-1960s).
* Centralized platforms create a *fake commons* and then have to police values among those commons. This exacerbates an "offense culture" and throw millions of people who share no values into a single battleground to fight for dominance, mob/swarm individuals of other tribes, etc. No one asked for this. It's egregiously, criminally bad software and user interface design.
* Centralized platforms create a *fake commons* and then have to police values among those commons. This exacerbates an "offense culture" and throws millions of people who share no values into a single battleground to fight for dominance, mob/swarm individuals of other tribes, etc. No one asked for this. It's egregiously, criminally bad software and user interface design.
* Echo chambers are the naturally consequence of dissent-free zones
One can create such zones by repulsion or attraction.
Modern online social platforms fall into this second category of failure, almost by design. In exploiting the unlimited bandwidth of the internet, they demonstrated that the scarcity of certain kinds of civic spaces is a feature and not a bug: they force is to devote some slice of our attention to people and things and ideas outside of our comfort zone. Each of us then becomes a little mixing chamber for different ideas and experiences, rather than simply becoming an ever finer-tuned resonator for some increasingly polarizing external signal. (We subject ourselves to Flanderization.)
Modern online social platforms fall into this second category of failure, almost by design. In exploiting the unlimited bandwidth of the internet, they demonstrated that the scarcity of certain kinds of civic spaces is a feature and not a bug: they force us to devote some slice of our attention to people and things and ideas outside of our comfort zone. Each of us then becomes a little mixing chamber for different ideas and experiences, rather than simply becoming an ever finer-tuned resonator for some increasingly polarizing external signal. (We subject ourselves to [Flanderization](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization).)
This is another instance of why privacy is so important.
* Ricky Gervais on Oxford Union: "Twitter more and more, gives people a way to create their own filter bubble and has led to a sort of conceit around, “My opinion is as good as your opinion”, which then when a bunch of idiots can find each other and band together, “my opinion is as good as your fact”. Twitter and FB have allowed idiots to unite, and become a social movement.