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We Need a PBS for Social Media
- root_axis 7y agoSocial media is a blight on human discourse. We need less of it, not more.
- badrequest 7y agoThis technology is clearly harmful to those who participate in it. Why anybody would think the solution is to get the government involved in the farce is beyond me.
- dadarepublic 7y agoI think you've misperceived PBS and what this effort would be. The funding would be _public_ - as in crowdsourced. If the effort were non-profit like PBS it would be eligible for grants and funding from government(s) but it would not act as a government agency. I think a good question to ask would be to ask how we insure that governmental intelligence agencies do not have their hooks in the effort.
- oliwarner 7y agoI think the argument here is that social media is harmful, with increasing evidence that in those that use it most, it promotes loneliness and depression rather than bringing people together. That's before you consider the network effects of misinformation.
- weberc2 7y agoGenuine question: can the government legally sponsor a social media network if that network censors legal but abhorrent speech (e.g., anti-black or anti-white hate speech)? Seems like it would either be a cesspool or it would get struck down in the courts.
- conception 7y agoThe government has censored public speech in various forms of media since forever, whether funded or not. It wouldn't be an issue.
- weberc2 7y agoI would be surprised if the courts would uphold an equivalence between broadcast television and a social network. I would expect them to interpret speech on a public social network like speech in a town square.
- ape4 7y agoNot the government but a non-profit.
- basch 7y agoWhat is harmful, electronic expression, and hosting? How is that different from the site you are on right now or email? Are you really saying the "tech" is harmful, or do people just say things you dont like? It's not so much facebook thats harmful, but how THEY choose to rank content. What content they give preference to is a human decision, no matter how much they shout the word algorithm. If you are saying people shouldnt be allowed to express or amplify sentiment, then I would think you are against the mail as well.
- throwaway_law 7y ago>How is that different from the site you are on right now or email? I don't think Hacker News or "Email" are collecting/monetizing your data, or have teams of PhD's actively researching how the UX/UI can psychologically addict you so you spend more time using them...thats just for starters. But sure lets bury our head in the sand and pretend FB is still some fun startup college kids built in their dorm for college kids to communicate with each other, and lets also pretend Zuckerburg has matured from those days of calling users "dumbfucks" for trusting him with their data.
- robbrown451 7y agoThe point is that it is not the concept of social media that is problematic, it is that what is now available and popular is beholden to corporate interests, which tend to be in conflict with user interests. Just like commercial TV and radio. Hence the proposal of the article.
- basch 7y agois addictive design ux harmful tech or an attack on human psychology and behavior? im more asking why we are blaming "technology."
- throwaway_law 7y ago>im more asking why we are blaming "technology." reply No one is blaming technology with a broad brushstroke, hence the article suggesting a "PBS for Social Media", if social media was painted as inherently bad, they wouldn't be proposing and alternative platform. It was you who originally extrapolated some judgement on social media to Hacker News and Email. I was simply suggesting there are certain concerning behaviors social media giants engage in that clearly are not applicable to HN or Email as a whole. Not sure how you again extrapolate that to blaming technology. >is addictive design ux harmful tech or an attack on human psychology and behavior? Attacking human psychology and behavior through addictive design is harmful, especially when its successful and done at scale. Just as allowing corporations behind harmful and addictive products (tobacco) to attack human psychology and behavior...such as marketing tobacco as "cool" to children using cartoons as they historically did. Are cartoons bad? I guess they could be. Is marketing to children bad? Maybe, we need more information. Are tobacco products harmful? It took nearly 50 years of litigation, but the answer is a resounding yes, tobacco products are harmful to health.
- qntty 7y agoYou could say the same about television.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sp332 7y agoThis seems pretty doable from a tech standpoint. Is funding really the only reason it's not being done? I think a much thornier question is the moderation policies. With broadcasting, not everyone can get air time and so there's an expectation of curation built-in. But once everyone can technically join in the conversation, keeping certain people or topics out can be a very heated conversation.
- noobermin 7y agoThe reality is that is already happening, just that we are literally living on the good will of the companies running these services.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ChristianBundy 7y agoThe answer that we use when developing Scuttlebutt is that you get to choose who to listen to. Free listening rather than free speech, so bad actors are filtered out by you and your community rather than powerful institutions.
- sp332 7y agoDo you have the ability for people to choose their audience - like a group of people they are comfortable goofing off around and another group they want to present a more professional face to? I think this is one of Facebook's killer features. Another feature I miss having on Twitter is the ability to manage comments on one's own posts.
- root_axis 7y agoScuttlebutt is great, but "filtering out bad actors" is already possible on most of the popular social media platforms. Simply block or unfollow "bad actors" and it's all good.
- 7y ago
- BitwiseFool 7y agoI'm getting really burned out by the wanton use of the term 'Propaganda'. "YouTube spreads propaganda and is toxic to children. Twitter spreads propaganda and is toxic to racial relations. Facebook spreads propaganda and is toxic to democracy itself." What does the author actually mean by this? Messages posted and shared by government entities? Or, people sharing inflammatory opinions?
- umeshunni 7y agoNYTimes spreads propaganda and is toxic to the credibility of media.
- krapp 7y agoI feel the same way about Orwellian metaphors. So many things are wrongthink and thoughtcrime and a slippery slope to a boot stomping on our head forever now. It's not even clever, much less compelling, and most people who invoke them probably haven't even read Orwell, they're just familiar with the memes.
- excalibur 7y agoBeing numb to the repeated warnings of our imminent descent into an Orwellian nightmare is the most damning critique of our society I've heard all day.
- krapp 7y agoWhen every little thing is a sign of our imminent descent into an Orwellian nightmare, then nothing is.
- excalibur 7y agoRight, I get it. It's the same reason nobody believes you when you point out the glaring similarities between Trump and Hitler. Because on the Internet, everyone is Hitler. We're failing ourselves.
- 7y ago
- itomato 7y agoWe have better than 'PBS for Social Media'. We (still) have IRC.
- dangus 7y agoYou have to be in a thick bubble separated from all the teens in the universe to think that IRC can do even 10% of what Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok/Facebook are capable of doing. Facebook in particular is nearly an operating system.
- noobermin 7y agoThe replacement for IRC these days is discord. It's not like we can't do IRC again, it just isn't as visible for people who's only experience with installing a program is through an app store.
- duskwuff 7y agoIRC is not social media. It is, at best, an instant messaging protocol -- and one which fails to meet most of the modern-day requirements for such a protocol, e.g. first-class support for persistent identities, offline messaging, and chat history; end-to-end encryption; support for non-textual content... etc.
- zacharytelschow 7y agoNo, we don't.
- workethics 7y agoAlright then
- not_a_cop75 7y agoPBS also spreads propaganda. Look at Sesame Street as of recent and basically, they label Trump a shithead. I mean anyone can disagree with the guy and basically does. I'm sad to think that shows like this are basically telling our kids what to think, rather than encouraging independent thought.
- bdamm 7y agoReference? Sesame Street is mostly apolitical, unless you consider encouraging tolerance to be political. My experience with PBS is that there's plenty of encouragement of independent thought. Yes, there's maybe too much armchair science and handwaving, but that's a wider cultural issue that every media outlet is participating in.
- not_a_cop75 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_r6iojNnYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_r6iojNnYg It's been early on and recent as far as I know - if you watch the whole clip you'll see that, though they only show a second or two of the new clips. I would never teach kids to make fun of others. It's simply bad form.
- not_a_cop75 7y ago"In a Time of Universal Deceit — Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act"
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- msbarnett 7y agoIs your complaint here that the writers of these segments didn’t use a time machine in order to determine that the regularly lampooned pop culture celebrity they were parodying would become president several decades later? Or that they did use a time machine and that this particular parody was politically motivated, unlike all their other celebrity parodies? Because they parody a lot of celebrities and always have.
- Deimorz 7y ago(Disclaimer: self-promotion) This article echoes a lot of the reasons I'm working on Tildes (https://tildes.net https://tildes.net) and specifically founded it as a non-profit. My announcement post from last year discusses how the current approach to community-based sites -- specifically the dependence on venture capital and advertising -- makes companies chase goals that are harmful for the users themselves: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093) I believe that a non-profit model is the only way to break out of the current cycle of sites starting out as "too good to be true" (as they burn through their VC), and inevitably devolving into privacy-invading, advertising-heavy sites dominated by lowest-common-denominator content when they need to keep forcing growth and monetize their users. Tildes has been publicly visible for a while now, but still requires an invite to register an account. If you're interested in registering and participating just send me an email, the address is in the announcement post linked above. It's not intended to be difficult to get invites, I mostly just want to keep the growth rate under control while more features and the early site culture continue building up.
- bscphil 7y agoQuick thought: this looks like a clone of Reddit, or maybe more loosely HN, Lobsters, or Metafilter. I think the most important aspect of social media to most people is that it allows for people who are friends "in real life" to share text / media with a circle of friends in a semi-private forum. This is why such an apparently unlikely candidate as Discord has become the medium of choice for a lot of young people. It's basically group chat with a few extra features like history search, different "channels", and easy media sharing. It's also why I think a lot of the current open source attempts are likely doomed to failure for this purpose - they're basically decentralized Twitter. Do you have plans for Tildes to fill this kind of role? Admittedly, I didn't look all that closely at it, and so what you're getting from me is my surface impression.
- Deimorz 7y agoYes, Tildes is a link-aggregator-style site that's similar to reddit, HN, etc. There's no capability for setting up private groups (though the site is open-source and someone could certainly run their own private instance if they wanted to). I usually think of the distinction as something like being "subject-based" instead of "people-based". Some sites focus on one or the other, and some try to do both. Tildes is definitely on the subject-based end.
- peterwwillis 7y agoIf you took a combination of Facebook, Nextdoor, and PBS, removed all commercial interests, made it publicly owned, and made its mission the betterment of the public good, yes, that would actually be amazing. (As a portal for government information and services) I would start with just a very stripped-down platform, and then allow integrations, such that every government entity could use the platform to publish information and communicate. Citizens could also communicate among themselves, either in "neighborhood groups", or privately. But personal profiles should be private by default, and require strong authentication guarantees for others to view. Everyone could still comment on public content as they do today, but personal data would remain private. As government entities integrate into the platform, they could begin publishing data that citizens could subscribe to. Community classes at the local library, parks department announcing a call for volunteers, DMV office closings, IRS filing deadlines, local civic board meeting notes, and of course, PBS content. It could be one source to consume all of the potential open data available to citizens. It could also be a portal to find the right government services, as well as pass information to it: report a crime, pothole, zoning violation, etc much like '311 apps' do today (Philadelphia 311: https://www.phila.gov/311/form/Pages/default.aspx https://www.phila.gov/311/form/Pages/default.aspx Open Maps Philly: https://openmaps.phila.gov/ https://openmaps.phila.gov/ Open Data Philly: https://www.opendataphilly.org/ https://www.opendataphilly.org/ Philly Property History: https://li.phila.gov/ https://li.phila.gov/ Philly Atlas: https://atlas.phila.gov/ https://atlas.phila.gov/) Right now Facebook and custom regional solutions serves much of this need, but it's also filled with a huge amount of crap that we shouldn't have to deal with just to find this information. And of course, privacy can come first on such a platform, rather than last. > Let’s build one. Fuck it, yeah, let's. Where do I sign up?
- sp332 7y agoI've only heard nasty things about Nextdoor - probably because it's more sensational. What do you like about it?
- peterwwillis 7y agoGranted, Nextdoor is a source of a lot of drama. The features I like are the ability to connect with a specific neighborhood, receive local notifications, and coordinate with neighbors. I think if there were very specific groups for very specific purposes in an area, or only govt employees could start new posts, it could be useful, such as "the parks department is having a clean-up day this weekend near you, post here to coordinate rides to the park", "there is an amber alert in your neighborhood", "police are asking if you have any tips about a break-in that happened on your block", "school closures tomorrow", "local elections tomorrow at the following locations".
- riffic 7y agoThe "Public Alternative" hinted in this paywalled article can be built on the w3c recommended standard, ActivityPub. Organizations should be adopting this and running implementations under their own organizational control.
- anderber 7y agoI feel like Mastodon has the right idea. Decentralized, open-source and easy to setup.
- riffic 7y agoMedia organizations (I'm looking directly at you nytimes.com) should be standing up their own Mastodon instances for the benefit of their writers and staff. ditto for anyone else in the public sphere currently publishing status updates via walled garden platforms (elected officials, agencies, educational institutions, et cetera) edit: or, more generically, any implementation of ActivityPub will do. or write your own! https://github.com/BasixKOR/awesome-activitypub https://github.com/BasixKOR/awesome-activitypub
- privong 7y ago> ditto for anyone else in the public sphere currently publishing status updates via walled garden platforms (elected officials, agencies, educational institutions, et cetera) I like this idea. But I think it's unlikely to happen. Universities often don't even run their own email anymore (at least for students; faculty often have a local Exchange setup for them). I would have thought that Universities would want to run their own services for file synchronization and sharing (i.e., internal Dropbox), audio/video conferencing (i.e., internal but interoperable Zoom/Skype, perhaps set up with SIP), etc. This would enable them to better manage IP and sensitive student information (SSN's, etc.), but they don't seem to have enough foresight to offer those kinds of services until the faculty are already using a freemium service. Then, _if_ they roll out something, the University version is clumsy and error-ridden. Additionally, the network effects of other social networks likely means it would be a tall order to convince the sufficiently senior administrator that they should dump twitter and go to their own Mastodon instance. 20 years ago this might've been a possibility. That was back when individual departments ran their own email/web/whatever servers. So individual departments within universities that had more agility and flexibility might've tried something like that. But now most universities seem to be clawing that functionality and freedom away from departments and putting it into a centralized IT department. So email stays because it's already embedded in the culture, but it makes it hard to add something new like a federated social network (or even video conferencing, it seems).
- busterarm 7y agoNYT journalists still wouldn't be responsible enough to not say something racist.
- lukifer 7y ago1. Are you referring to something specific that I'm not aware of? 2. Is this really the primary concern, in the grand scheme of things? In a utilitarian sense, a problematic or offensive choice of words is peanuts compared to (for instance) failing to sufficiently question the WMD narrative in the run-up to the Iraq War.
- busterarm 7y agoIt's been in the news for the last month. Admittedly I'm being a bit snarky here, but the NYT is firing a shot saying we need a platform that's administered responsibly (which we do) when they've proved they can't even use the ones we have responsibly. Between the linked stories and the whole Sarah Jeong thing, the NYT doesn't have the gravitas to come out and ask for this right now. The Gray Lady is failing its mission (for more reasons than just this). https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-york-times-tightens-up-on-social-media-after-scandals-people-are-locking-down-their-accounts https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-york-times-tightens-up-on-... https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/339852/tweets-come-back-to-haunt-new-york-times-cnn-jo.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/339852/tweets... https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/new-york-times-political-editor-in-hot-water-over-insensitive-tweets/ https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/new-york-times-political-edito...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- snickerbockers 7y ago>Trolls and abusive behaviors thrive on for-profit social platforms in part because at some level the platforms don’t mind this. They'd thrive even more on a government-funded platform which is legally obligated not to censor their speech.
- root_axis 7y agoIs that true? The FCC "censors" plenty of speech on the public airways, is that unconstitutional?
- snickerbockers 7y agoThe courts consider it to be a first-amendment violation for a politician to block somebody from on twitter. This is a clear-cut precedent that the Government isn't allowed to exclude US citizens from social media.
- root_axis 7y agoA representative of the government blocking a citizen from seeking redress from that representative is not the same thing as removing "objectionable" content.
- snickerbockers 7y agoYes it is.
- lonelappde 7y agoThen why do our cities have "free speech zones"?
- martey 7y agoThe author isn't suggesting that their proposed social network be run by the government, and there is no legal obligation for private non-profits who accept government funding to refrain from censorship. Later in the article, the author explicitly suggests that accounts be connected to real world identities in order to prevent fake accounts and discourage trolls.
- cestith 7y agoI find it disingenuous to say we need a public, free, and open place to exchange ideas in an article behind a company's paywall.
- lazugod 7y agoDisingenuous in what way? Do you think the editorial author doesn’t actually desire a public space?
- cestith 7y agoIf the desire is so strong to make discourse open and unencumbered by individual corporate walls, then this one article could have been placed up outside the paywall. To say, "I think we need an open public forum" on a medium as open and public as the WWW and then to restrict it behind az paywall kind of misses the point of the article itself. It is within a walled garden arguing for an alternative to walled gardens when the party publishing it is the one controlling the walls in this case.
- oliwarner 7y agoWe don't need another service provider. We need a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. A way that my device can securely communicate with my friends devices and say "Sup?". A way that we can share messages, photos, calendars, contacts, etc without some behemoth (or state) sticking its nose in the middle. I've had this conversation here before and somebody mentions RSS but it's not enough on its own. It's certainly a basis for content exchange but nowhere near enough for the authentication, and authoring side of things.
- nanomonkey 7y agoTry the Scuttlebutt protocol, it's a gossip network that does essentially just what you specified.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Zaskoda 7y agoDecentralize. I've been working on a federated address book and thinking about how to sync contacts with other address books... It's like Really Simple Federation.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoFeels like that war was lost when all the chat providers abandoned XMPP messaging. RSS was downplayed and essentially deprecated round about the same time. Open and decentralised is last decade's answer. I don't much like what's come since, but there you go.
- vernie 7y agoPosting op-eds should be against the rules.
- dehrmann 7y agoI don't disagree, but more people watch Fox News than PBS, so I'm not sure how much it would help.
- golemotron 7y agoI can't wait for the incessant fund-raisers on sign-on ala wikipedia and terrestrial PBS. It's easy to think this is the best model but that is the price.
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoSo, the solution to big corporations employing asshole tactics to lure you into selling your attention is big government using your tax money to make a heavily censored, totalitarian version of Facebook? Ok. The whole article is futile attempt to try to embellish that concept.
- youdontknowtho 7y agoI would say it needs to be more like BBC with a funding stream that isn't dependent on Government approval.
- thosakwe 7y agoIt's been a while since I've found myself disagreeing with something so strongly. I think that the absolute last thing we need is government-funded social media. If YouTube "spreads propaganda," what do you expect from a platform that a massive government has its hands directly on? I don't understand. It's as dystopian-sounding as any idea I have ever heard. > In other words, it should be built to prioritize sharing things you love over getting attention by simply being loud online. This is an over-trivialization of Twitter. At risk of sounding snarky: if you think Twitter is all about getting attention, you're using the app wrong, and maybe you only follow celebrities. Also, I think the question "Will people use it, and how many?" is the wrong question ask. Why will people use it? Can I get news updates? Can I find funny/entertaining content? Can I reasonably expect organic engagement, and potential virality? Can I get private life updates from my friends, without the government's eyes peering in? People don't typically go to PBS for most of these things (news is one thing they do), so I can't imagine how a "PBS" for social media would be very different. Yet another question: "Why would I be on a social media app with my parents?" I can understand the reasoning behind this, but I don't see it realistically gaining any traction or significant usage, ever. All this being said, Mr. Mark Coatney is a former director of Tumblr, so obviously there's a big gulf in social media experience between us, and I could be egregiously wrong on some of what I have said above. Who knows?
- tomglynch 7y agoAs a counterpoint, many publicly funded TV stations run without bias.
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoCare to give any examples? Have you thought that maybe their biases align with your ideology so you just don't notice them?
- mike741 7y agoAs a counter-counterpoint, every TV station runs with some form of bias.
- qtplatypus 7y ago
- dreamcompiler 7y agoWe need a PBS for search engines too. A public, government-funded spider that indexes everything on the web that wants to be indexed. And a public API so that anybody can build a search engine on top of it.