3 ms·
My conclusion, after writing and thinking about this a lot lately, is that the three mega platforms are unwise, but unavoidable, due to network effects. We are
by theNJR 8y ago
My conclusion, after writing and thinking about this a lot lately, is that the three mega platforms are unwise, but unavoidable, due to network effects.
We are going to have to make a concerted effort to somehow fix this. Hyper-niched communities, like Hacker News, work so well because we are united around shared passions and goals.
Mega platforms contain many ideologies which are at odds with each other, constantly battling for their truth.
Never before in history have competing tribes had to share the same space like this. It doesn't work.
- chillacy 8y agoMaybe an analogy can be drawn from two tribes being integrated into an empire. Usually the empire changes both tribes into its form, but some new gods get added to the pantheon.
- zanny 8y agoFacebook et al go out of their way to silo its users into small cliques of influence. On Youtube if you watch gaming videos you get ads for gaming, get recommended gaming, and aren't going to see ads for makeup or power tools. Any open access community will attract hostile actors seeking to usurp it. The problem with Facebook / Youtube / et al is that these corporations are more interested in trying to find a technical way to automate moderation than to actually moderate and police their platforms to weed out of the bad actors. It isn't something that is inevitable or even made worse by scale, its just these companies are operating to maximize profit, and needing human faces at screens to moderate public comments is a substantial expense.
- nilskidoo 8y agoI bet it's more psychologically-based than that. From collegiate safe spaces to news media bubbles, to the social networking accounts themselves where nobody honestly follows people or ideas they themselves object to, everybody wants their own gated community/echo chamber. Personally, as big as I am on free speech and anti-censorship, I don't believe that anybody should be allowed to post pix of minors online under any circumstances, even parents harmlessly to their personal FB profiles. UNLESS it's posting old pix of one's self. Otherwise I feel it betrays the privacy rights of those minors. They may well feel differently when they come of legal age, and by all means they can post whatever they like of themselves after the fact, but in the meantime privacy should be the autoset.
- theNJR 8y agoIt's not about user siloing, it's about silencing the speech of "other". When the other is anti-vax and flight earth, that silencing seems morally right. But there are some significant unintended consequences to that. I just finished an article trying to put this all together: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280858