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There is something new going on in the social network realm that can undermine trolling efforts as they exist today. Social networks started appearing when tec

by DenisM 10y ago

There is something new going on in the social network realm that can undermine trolling efforts as they exist today. Social networks started appearing when tech adoption was relatively scarce. They predate the smartphone revolution. As such they had to bend out of shape to produce as much public or semi-public content in order to attract and engage enough users to sustain the network effects. The direct side effect of this approach is transparency of the discussion. People who disagree would butt heads because the feel the need to defend "their side" in "public". A manipulation agent can assess the current state of discussion as well as the immediate outcome of his actions, so that he can fine-tune his campaigns. Now that the smartphone adoption is basically 100%, it becomes possible to build private social networks without making everything public or semi-public. The ones where content is only posted/shared in a close group and is not observable by trolls. No shares, no reposts, no likes, no "people are talking". Nothing. How would you use Snapchat to assess and manipulate the public opinion? The best you can do is check the hits on your web site. What if you lost even that to some sort of caching? Now you're flying completely blind. Pretty much every popular messenger app has the potential to mutate into an opaque social network. Perhaps many already did.

buzzybee 10y ago
It correlates with my theory of Endless September someday having an end. The problem of Endless September was growth - too much growth, too quickly. When that stops, and unless we experience an AI personhood event, it has to, because we only have so many people on the planet and so much data they can transmit - the network settles into a place where it can focus on quality instead of sheer scale. In the developed world we are likely already entering this phase, with online access surpassing 80%, and the rest of the world is not that far behind. So then what happens? The business model changes. Social network technologies will re-commoditize and the value will return to communities. Privacy takes a bigger role, as you note. And the world, for better or worse(but probably better), becomes even weirder and harder to assess or manipulate top-down.

by DenisM 10y ago

buzzybee 10y ago

It correlates with my theory of Endless September someday having an end. The problem of Endless September was growth - too much growth, too quickly. When that stops, and unless we experience an AI personhood event, it has to, because we only have so many people on the planet and so much data they can transmit - the network settles into a place where it can focus on quality instead of sheer scale. In the developed world we are likely already entering this phase, with online access surpassing 80%, and the rest of the world is not that far behind. So then what happens? The business model changes. Social network technologies will re-commoditize and the value will return to communities. Privacy takes a bigger role, as you note. And the world, for better or worse(but probably better), becomes even weirder and harder to assess or manipulate top-down.