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You seem to have thought about this, and you're generally insightful, but I have to disagree. The problem with twitter and fb isn't the low revenues per user-d

by x0x0 7y ago

You seem to have thought about this, and you're generally insightful, but I have to disagree. The problem with twitter and fb isn't the low revenues per user-day. The problem is the behavior they've cultivated and incentivized from the beginning. For example, had twitter not created a culture of basically brigading, they would be in a different place. But they at minimum allowed and probably incentivized that to become part of the twitter experience, and I don't think it can be recovered from. As for facebook, if it took you until 2019 to say Alex Jones can't build his business on your platform, you haven't even started to think in any serious way about what behavior you want on fb. Well actually they have: mark wants dollars and doesn't give a shit about anything else. You may find this interview with former Reddit pm Dan McComas fascinating: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/dan-mccomas-reddit-product-svp-and-imzy-founder-interview.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/dan-mccomas-reddit-pr...

wpietri 7y ago
I don't think these are different problems. If Twitter or Facebook had taken harm reduction seriously from the get-go, they wouldn't exist. Ad-supported social media only works at enormous scale, because of the network effect, because of the high fixed costs, and because of the low per-user revenue. McComas is right that a grow-at-all-costs mentality is part of the problem. But that's a consequence of the financial situation, not the cause. If they had infinite money, they could have had growth and user/society safety. But they didn't, and they prioritized the things that let them get to the scale where the investors got the payoff that was promised. And where the people in charge got rich, of course.
- x0x0 7y ago
  > If Twitter or Facebook had taken harm reduction seriously from the get-go, they wouldn't exist I disagree, though obviously it's all guesses, and depends on your definition of harm reduction. I believe more strongly for facebook, but even for twitter, I think both hand pretty low-harm products inside them: flirting, hookups, dating, friends, jobs, photo sharing, etc, rather than chasing super high engagement via fake news. I don't include adtech as a harm in my case. I also think facebook had a ludicrously profitable Tencent payments business opportunity, had it not become such a toxic product and not spent all it's mindshare on adtech. I further think both had a OneLogin opportunity: login with serious 2fa and probabilistic risk is hard, and selling a saas login plus social network import is (still?) a big opportunity. I also think both would have been protected by the gab or voat-type cesspools: when you explicitly choose the people too vile to be on Twitter or reddit, that reinforces and magnifies itself rapidly. And finally, FB busts ass for a $0.12/userday in the US: 45/year. I can think of a lot of businesses that are worth $4/month.

by x0x0 7y ago

wpietri 7y ago

I don't think these are different problems. If Twitter or Facebook had taken harm reduction seriously from the get-go, they wouldn't exist. Ad-supported social media only works at enormous scale, because of the network effect, because of the high fixed costs, and because of the low per-user revenue. McComas is right that a grow-at-all-costs mentality is part of the problem. But that's a consequence of the financial situation, not the cause. If they had infinite money, they could have had growth and user/society safety. But they didn't, and they prioritized the things that let them get to the scale where the investors got the payoff that was promised. And where the people in charge got rich, of course.

x0x0 7y ago
> If Twitter or Facebook had taken harm reduction seriously from the get-go, they wouldn't exist I disagree, though obviously it's all guesses, and depends on your definition of harm reduction. I believe more strongly for facebook, but even for twitter, I think both hand pretty low-harm products inside them: flirting, hookups, dating, friends, jobs, photo sharing, etc, rather than chasing super high engagement via fake news. I don't include adtech as a harm in my case. I also think facebook had a ludicrously profitable Tencent payments business opportunity, had it not become such a toxic product and not spent all it's mindshare on adtech. I further think both had a OneLogin opportunity: login with serious 2fa and probabilistic risk is hard, and selling a saas login plus social network import is (still?) a big opportunity. I also think both would have been protected by the gab or voat-type cesspools: when you explicitly choose the people too vile to be on Twitter or reddit, that reinforces and magnifies itself rapidly. And finally, FB busts ass for a $0.12/userday in the US: 45/year. I can think of a lot of businesses that are worth $4/month.