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Though there was hardly anything that I didn't already know, I liked the movie very much for its presentation that drove the point well to people who may not ha

Though there was hardly anything that I didn't already know, I liked the movie very much for its presentation that drove the point well to people who may not have understood how these platforms work, the privacy implications and the dangers therein. I've already recommended this movie to some more people. As for the cultural impact of the movie, I don't think it's going to be much. Cambridge Analytica had so much news coverage during its time (along with public hearings by lawmakers and documentaries about it) and still did nothing material to the bottom line of these companies. They've actually grown bigger and become a lot richer since then. 1. Most people just wouldn't care enough to give up these platforms. While I've been enraged for a long time about these platforms, the big gap here is that there is no good answer to the question, "what are the better alternatives?" Don't tell me that Mastodon and Mastodon clones can be replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook events, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. Where are the nice(r) mobile apps (not just some website designed for desktops) for any replacements? 2. Governments will not regulate these platforms in meaningful ways that create fundamental changes. Regulatory capture is what's looming around, where the current biggies make the rules and ensure that nobody else can beat them. I will keep pushing people to switch to better platforms (even if they seem deficient in comparison), but I'm sadly not very optimistic about big changes in the next decade or so.

Everhusk 6y ago
We are building a solution with social.network, it's not fully completed yet but please keep an eye on it towards the end of the year.
- messo 6y ago
  I'm applauding every effort to compete with the big players, but I also hope that anyone who spend time trying to solve these problems builds interoperable systems (open protocols etc). What I really like about the ActivityPub protocol (though it is not perfect), is the way it makes permissionless innovation a thing again. People can build tools and communities to their liking and at the same time be a part of a much larger ecosystem. One example is a rather fresh project based on this protocol, trying to recreate reddit/HN's functionality, only federated: https://dev.narwhal.city/ https://dev.narwhal.city/ (https://git.sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide https://git.sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide)
  - Everhusk 6y ago
    Yeah we will be open sourcing it, mostly the governance/economic model will be built on parity substrate so anyone can deploy or upgrade that system. I think solving the ad driven business model is much more important than decentralizing the content servers, hard to meet the UI/UX standards most people have when you go this route also.
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      This is surprising to me. I didn't think that platforms that leverage network effects were typically well-suited to open sourcing unless it was something federated. Are you worried about the system being gamed or usurped by someone willing to be more exploitative?
      - Everhusk 6y ago
        I think proof of stake/liquidity providers with lockup creates enough incentive to keep the network effects within one system. Open sourcing the application side is a bit trickier.
messo 6y ago
> Though there was hardly anything that I didn't already know, I liked the movie very much for its presentation […] This is exactly the same impression I had after watching the movie. There was little new information in this movie for me, other than the interviews with leading developers that now has turned on their own creation. That was quite powerful to watch. > As for the cultural impact of the movie, I don't think it's going to be much. The cynical part of me agrees with you. The hopeful part of me is encouraged by the fact that this movie communicates rather technical and boring information in a very human way, and that it shows how algorithm manipulates you, not some random folks that was targeted by Cambridge Analytica. This was much more relatable and personal than during the news coverage on how Facebook and Twitter was (ab)used during the last election, and that gives me hope. The discussion has largely been relevant to political animals, nerds and idealistic people so far, and this movie feels like the first real brake out of that sphere and into the popular culture.
trabant00 6y ago
> While I've been enraged for a long time about these platforms, the big gap here is that there is no good answer to the question, "what are the better alternatives?" This assumes we want something to replace these platforms. I for one want no social media. I admit I can't prove they are damaging no matter the implementation but I challenge anybody to prove the contrary.
- shuntress 6y ago
  "social media" doesn't have to mean "wall-to-wall influencers and hyper-targeted bad-faith political ads disguised as individual opinion". The original promise (a more convenient+reliable way to contact infrequent acquaintances, plan events, read/report local events, and broadcast personal updates) is certainly something worth having.
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    IMHO social media has a natural tendency to mean "wall-to-wall influencers and hyper-targeted bad-faith political ads disguised as individual opinion". If you build it, they will come - there's a strong practical motivation for these people to try and be there in any social medium that gets popular. In the absence of a strong mechanism to actively, effectively keep them out or kick them out (what would that be? It's not easy) social media will become like that unless that's a niche platform that almost nobody uses, so all the influencers and political ads don't care because they are somewhere else - but they will follow the eyeballs wherever they go.
rapnie 6y ago
> Don't tell me that Mastodon and Mastodon clones can be replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook events, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. Of course not. Because Mastodon is a federated microblogging service. As that it is a good alternative for Twitter. My Mastodon client has a better UX than twitter, no algorithmic feed, no ads, no trackers, no distracting recommendations, and - importantly - breathing a friendly, open and largely non-toxic culture. Sure, it only has a tiny number of users in comparison to twitter (about 4 million), but there is no reason this can be many many more. And hosted on a federation of 1,000's of servers. Much less risk to be de-platformed from your favorite walled-garden for obscure reasons. The Fediverse is only at the start of its evolution, and things are becoming exciting for us devs. Diverse applications, PeerTube, PixelFed, write.as, Lemmy, many more, all start to be integrated together. A gradual process, as the underlying standards mature and new ones (content addressing, object capabilities, datashards) are being developed. Besides federated ActivityPub there's work ongoing to extend to full p2p contexts. I'd say you should have Developer FOMO. To miss out on opportunities to stand out, and be part of a path that could be part of the solution to our social dilemma :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- auganov 6y ago
  > Much less risk to be de-platformed from your favorite walled-garden for obscure reasons. Federation does absolutely nothing for this. The risk is probably even higher given how small most of these instances are. Much more likely to run into an admin/moderator.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    In the fediverse, you're more likely be able to say "Hey Lisa, why did you ban me?" than you can get into contact with the Youtube/Facebook/etc forces that be. That may or may not be better because your admin may respond "Well because I think you're a jerk and disagree with your political views" but at least you can migrate to a new instance still instead of just being banned for all eternity.
motohagiography 6y ago
While many of us (technologists) were unsurprised, is there any reaction from friends and relatives who say, "wait, you knew about this and you didn't say anything?" This doc is way less dramatic, but when the Snowden leaks happened I responded to people with, "what parts of this could I have told you about that you would have believed if you hadn't seen it in the news?" Reality is, most people are more afraid of being thought of as an outsider than any conceivable consequence that befalls their perceived in-group.
- wetmore 6y ago
  > While many of us (technologists) were unsurprised, is there any reaction from friends and relatives who say, "wait, you knew about this and you didn't say anything?" This was basically the reaction my girlfriend had after watching it.
- mawise 6y ago
  > Reality is, most people are more afraid of being thought of as an outsider than any conceivable consequence that befalls their perceived in-group I think that very nicely sums up the problem. Very few people are willing to socially isolate themselves this way. I've been working on an open-source self-hosted private blogging platform[1] that I have visions of being a facebook replacement, but the truth is very few people want to tell their friends: "follow me on this website I built with these separate login credentials". Reminds me of stories I read on here about middle school kids being ostracized for sending text messages without iMessage and showing up as a "green bubble" [1] https://simpleblogs.org https://simpleblogs.org
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    > "follow me on this website I built with these separate login credentials" That does seem to be one of the biggest hurdles stopping migrations from inferior platforms to superior ones. (The other main hurdle being network effects / the lack of interoperability). It's like the saying "If you can get your ship into orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.", i.e. "If we had a single sign-on system that worked across the whole of the web, users would be halfway towards all the best sites."
messo 6y ago
> Don't tell me that Mastodon and Mastodon clones can be replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook events, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. It has been for me. But I am very aware that the fediverse is far from ready to capture the large masses currently using all the regular social networks. And that's fine, if the fediverse were growing at the same rate as VC-funded, growth-hacked social media platforms, that would worry me greatly. It takes time to build tools and communities that is made by and for the users of said tools. I find Mastodon to be a much better experience to use both on the web and on the apps available for my Android phone, than Twitter. I have tried to use Twitter again a few times the last years, but it's not the same anymore. I used to be an active Twitter user. I prefer being a part of my Norwegian mastodon instance, in addition to one of the larger English-speaking instances. > Where are the nice(r) mobile apps (not just some website designed for desktops) for any replacements? I use Tusky (https://tusky.app/ https://tusky.app/), but there are several other really nice apps to choose from. On my laptop I use Tootle (https://github.com/bleakgrey/tootle https://github.com/bleakgrey/tootle).
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  On the mobile side, I can recommend Fedilab (available on F-droid) and Husky too, as alternatives to Tusky.
- input_sh 6y ago
  I feel like pointing out that the fediverse isn't really growing at any significant rate. Looking through some pretty-rudimentary-but-best-we-can-get stats (https://the-federation.info/ https://the-federation.info/), the number of users active in the last month hasn't really changed compared to a year ago, remaining steadily at 400k-500k. I personally find that slightly demoralising, but as someone already pointed out, there are fediverse platforms that are inches away from being usable (Lemmy, Mobilizon, Zap, Epicyon).
DanielBMarkham 6y ago
>> but I'm sadly not very optimistic about big changes in the next decade or so. Yeah. I liked it a lot as well, even though there was nothing new. This documentary is like walking into a crack house and saying "Hey guys! I've got this great PowerPoint presentation on how bad crack is for you!" Nice idea, I guess, but there's no reason at all I would think it has a chance of accomplishing anything. These efforts appear, make a splash, and then ... dissolve. I wish it weren't so, but there are some extremely powerful social forces at work here. A TV show ain't going to do much.
- Dumblydorr 6y ago
  I quit FB 5 years ago due to a couple other friends quitting and explaining their reasoning. If .1% of FB or Twitter users delete after this film, I'd say it's still a win.
  - DanielBMarkham 6y ago
    Agreed. If nothing else, this makes for a great explainer video. Find somebody who needs to know it and show it to them. The key problem is that 99.9% of folks even when they understand the problem can't fix it. Having said that, knowing beats not-knowing. There is good here.
  - knobcore 6y ago
    This type of thing reads like "please compost, recycle, and take public transportation" stuff. That's what I thought of the movie too. Andrew Keen has the right answer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRbI-Ui9vEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRbI-Ui9vEI) but nobody likes it. We're still all stuck in the John Barlow trap, thinking that if we just tweaked things here and there all will be right.
    - bob29 6y ago
      TLDW: i think anonymity is a huge curse i think if we can do away with anonymity then we can begin to rebuild democracy and of course ultimately it comes down to all of us ultimately we need to learn to be responsible not to insult not to propagandize and i think that will only come just as we look at each other as physical people in a place like this that will only be that will only eventually be realized if we can do away with anonymity so a new social contract new ways of reinventing democracy through analog and a more creative and responsible regulatory attitude towards um to to big social media and internet companies
rizpanjwani 6y ago
what about something like a non-profit? I was quite disappointed that keybase.io sold to zoom. I always thought more of it like a neutral public utility.
- monster2control 6y ago
  wt.social ?
zeruch 6y ago
The regulatory capture is the key bit.
pks016 6y ago
Similar reactions from me. Every other day we see articles those focus on these things. Significantly nothing new; in fact I cringed at some moments. I guess I/we are not the target audience. For cultural impact: Nope. It's gonna stay in people's mind few days. Then again back to normal.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
I'd slot the documentary right next to others that cover things like the horrors of factory farms, slave labor due to consumerism, etc.: while they can be incredibly moving, the impact on your day-to-day is so intangible that it's quite easy to ignore while making no changes to your habits. It reminds me of when I was working at a grocery store in Texas (HEB) and they experimented with hanging the cow's corpse that was being butchered in plain view. I guess in an effort to look fresh. Well, people complained about it. They said that it was gross, and the store went back to butchering before opening. Just looking at meat as pink saran-wrapped blobs that appear on shelves lets people ignore inconvenient truths. And I think we have this type of preference in all parts of our lives from social media to ignoring death itself.
- arvinsim 6y ago
  As long as people/corporations value convenience and profit, everything else is secondary.
ende 6y ago
Rather than surgical regulation, which as you rightly point out is often prone to capture, I would instead propose a cruder but effective governing instrument: the Pigovian tax Trace the chain of incentivizes further upstream, and what do we find? What animates the system? It’s advertising revenue, of course. So let’s tax the living hell out of advertising revenue. Fundamentally decreasing the profitability of a market is a sure way to disincentivize profiteering interests in it.

Everhusk 6y ago

We are building a solution with social.network, it's not fully completed yet but please keep an eye on it towards the end of the year.

messo 6y ago
I'm applauding every effort to compete with the big players, but I also hope that anyone who spend time trying to solve these problems builds interoperable systems (open protocols etc). What I really like about the ActivityPub protocol (though it is not perfect), is the way it makes permissionless innovation a thing again. People can build tools and communities to their liking and at the same time be a part of a much larger ecosystem. One example is a rather fresh project based on this protocol, trying to recreate reddit/HN's functionality, only federated: https://dev.narwhal.city/ https://dev.narwhal.city/ (https://git.sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide https://git.sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide)
- Everhusk 6y ago
  Yeah we will be open sourcing it, mostly the governance/economic model will be built on parity substrate so anyone can deploy or upgrade that system. I think solving the ad driven business model is much more important than decentralizing the content servers, hard to meet the UI/UX standards most people have when you go this route also.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    This is surprising to me. I didn't think that platforms that leverage network effects were typically well-suited to open sourcing unless it was something federated. Are you worried about the system being gamed or usurped by someone willing to be more exploitative?
    - Everhusk 6y ago
      I think proof of stake/liquidity providers with lockup creates enough incentive to keep the network effects within one system. Open sourcing the application side is a bit trickier.

messo 6y ago

> Though there was hardly anything that I didn't already know, I liked the movie very much for its presentation […] This is exactly the same impression I had after watching the movie. There was little new information in this movie for me, other than the interviews with leading developers that now has turned on their own creation. That was quite powerful to watch. > As for the cultural impact of the movie, I don't think it's going to be much. The cynical part of me agrees with you. The hopeful part of me is encouraged by the fact that this movie communicates rather technical and boring information in a very human way, and that it shows how algorithm manipulates you, not some random folks that was targeted by Cambridge Analytica. This was much more relatable and personal than during the news coverage on how Facebook and Twitter was (ab)used during the last election, and that gives me hope. The discussion has largely been relevant to political animals, nerds and idealistic people so far, and this movie feels like the first real brake out of that sphere and into the popular culture.

trabant00 6y ago

> While I've been enraged for a long time about these platforms, the big gap here is that there is no good answer to the question, "what are the better alternatives?" This assumes we want something to replace these platforms. I for one want no social media. I admit I can't prove they are damaging no matter the implementation but I challenge anybody to prove the contrary.

shuntress 6y ago
"social media" doesn't have to mean "wall-to-wall influencers and hyper-targeted bad-faith political ads disguised as individual opinion". The original promise (a more convenient+reliable way to contact infrequent acquaintances, plan events, read/report local events, and broadcast personal updates) is certainly something worth having.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  IMHO social media has a natural tendency to mean "wall-to-wall influencers and hyper-targeted bad-faith political ads disguised as individual opinion". If you build it, they will come - there's a strong practical motivation for these people to try and be there in any social medium that gets popular. In the absence of a strong mechanism to actively, effectively keep them out or kick them out (what would that be? It's not easy) social media will become like that unless that's a niche platform that almost nobody uses, so all the influencers and political ads don't care because they are somewhere else - but they will follow the eyeballs wherever they go.

rapnie 6y ago

> Don't tell me that Mastodon and Mastodon clones can be replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook events, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. Of course not. Because Mastodon is a federated microblogging service. As that it is a good alternative for Twitter. My Mastodon client has a better UX than twitter, no algorithmic feed, no ads, no trackers, no distracting recommendations, and - importantly - breathing a friendly, open and largely non-toxic culture. Sure, it only has a tiny number of users in comparison to twitter (about 4 million), but there is no reason this can be many many more. And hosted on a federation of 1,000's of servers. Much less risk to be de-platformed from your favorite walled-garden for obscure reasons. The Fediverse is only at the start of its evolution, and things are becoming exciting for us devs. Diverse applications, PeerTube, PixelFed, write.as, Lemmy, many more, all start to be integrated together. A gradual process, as the underlying standards mature and new ones (content addressing, object capabilities, datashards) are being developed. Besides federated ActivityPub there's work ongoing to extend to full p2p contexts. I'd say you should have Developer FOMO. To miss out on opportunities to stand out, and be part of a path that could be part of the solution to our social dilemma :)

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
auganov 6y ago
> Much less risk to be de-platformed from your favorite walled-garden for obscure reasons. Federation does absolutely nothing for this. The risk is probably even higher given how small most of these instances are. Much more likely to run into an admin/moderator.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  In the fediverse, you're more likely be able to say "Hey Lisa, why did you ban me?" than you can get into contact with the Youtube/Facebook/etc forces that be. That may or may not be better because your admin may respond "Well because I think you're a jerk and disagree with your political views" but at least you can migrate to a new instance still instead of just being banned for all eternity.

motohagiography 6y ago

While many of us (technologists) were unsurprised, is there any reaction from friends and relatives who say, "wait, you knew about this and you didn't say anything?" This doc is way less dramatic, but when the Snowden leaks happened I responded to people with, "what parts of this could I have told you about that you would have believed if you hadn't seen it in the news?" Reality is, most people are more afraid of being thought of as an outsider than any conceivable consequence that befalls their perceived in-group.

wetmore 6y ago
> While many of us (technologists) were unsurprised, is there any reaction from friends and relatives who say, "wait, you knew about this and you didn't say anything?" This was basically the reaction my girlfriend had after watching it.
mawise 6y ago
> Reality is, most people are more afraid of being thought of as an outsider than any conceivable consequence that befalls their perceived in-group I think that very nicely sums up the problem. Very few people are willing to socially isolate themselves this way. I've been working on an open-source self-hosted private blogging platform[1] that I have visions of being a facebook replacement, but the truth is very few people want to tell their friends: "follow me on this website I built with these separate login credentials". Reminds me of stories I read on here about middle school kids being ostracized for sending text messages without iMessage and showing up as a "green bubble" [1] https://simpleblogs.org https://simpleblogs.org
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > "follow me on this website I built with these separate login credentials" That does seem to be one of the biggest hurdles stopping migrations from inferior platforms to superior ones. (The other main hurdle being network effects / the lack of interoperability). It's like the saying "If you can get your ship into orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.", i.e. "If we had a single sign-on system that worked across the whole of the web, users would be halfway towards all the best sites."

messo 6y ago

> Don't tell me that Mastodon and Mastodon clones can be replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook events, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. It has been for me. But I am very aware that the fediverse is far from ready to capture the large masses currently using all the regular social networks. And that's fine, if the fediverse were growing at the same rate as VC-funded, growth-hacked social media platforms, that would worry me greatly. It takes time to build tools and communities that is made by and for the users of said tools. I find Mastodon to be a much better experience to use both on the web and on the apps available for my Android phone, than Twitter. I have tried to use Twitter again a few times the last years, but it's not the same anymore. I used to be an active Twitter user. I prefer being a part of my Norwegian mastodon instance, in addition to one of the larger English-speaking instances. > Where are the nice(r) mobile apps (not just some website designed for desktops) for any replacements? I use Tusky (https://tusky.app/ https://tusky.app/), but there are several other really nice apps to choose from. On my laptop I use Tootle (https://github.com/bleakgrey/tootle https://github.com/bleakgrey/tootle).

claudiawerner 6y ago
On the mobile side, I can recommend Fedilab (available on F-droid) and Husky too, as alternatives to Tusky.
input_sh 6y ago
I feel like pointing out that the fediverse isn't really growing at any significant rate. Looking through some pretty-rudimentary-but-best-we-can-get stats (https://the-federation.info/ https://the-federation.info/), the number of users active in the last month hasn't really changed compared to a year ago, remaining steadily at 400k-500k. I personally find that slightly demoralising, but as someone already pointed out, there are fediverse platforms that are inches away from being usable (Lemmy, Mobilizon, Zap, Epicyon).

DanielBMarkham 6y ago

>> but I'm sadly not very optimistic about big changes in the next decade or so. Yeah. I liked it a lot as well, even though there was nothing new. This documentary is like walking into a crack house and saying "Hey guys! I've got this great PowerPoint presentation on how bad crack is for you!" Nice idea, I guess, but there's no reason at all I would think it has a chance of accomplishing anything. These efforts appear, make a splash, and then ... dissolve. I wish it weren't so, but there are some extremely powerful social forces at work here. A TV show ain't going to do much.

Dumblydorr 6y ago
I quit FB 5 years ago due to a couple other friends quitting and explaining their reasoning. If .1% of FB or Twitter users delete after this film, I'd say it's still a win.
- DanielBMarkham 6y ago
  Agreed. If nothing else, this makes for a great explainer video. Find somebody who needs to know it and show it to them. The key problem is that 99.9% of folks even when they understand the problem can't fix it. Having said that, knowing beats not-knowing. There is good here.
- knobcore 6y ago
  This type of thing reads like "please compost, recycle, and take public transportation" stuff. That's what I thought of the movie too. Andrew Keen has the right answer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRbI-Ui9vEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRbI-Ui9vEI) but nobody likes it. We're still all stuck in the John Barlow trap, thinking that if we just tweaked things here and there all will be right.
  - bob29 6y ago
    TLDW: i think anonymity is a huge curse i think if we can do away with anonymity then we can begin to rebuild democracy and of course ultimately it comes down to all of us ultimately we need to learn to be responsible not to insult not to propagandize and i think that will only come just as we look at each other as physical people in a place like this that will only be that will only eventually be realized if we can do away with anonymity so a new social contract new ways of reinventing democracy through analog and a more creative and responsible regulatory attitude towards um to to big social media and internet companies

rizpanjwani 6y ago

what about something like a non-profit? I was quite disappointed that keybase.io sold to zoom. I always thought more of it like a neutral public utility.

monster2control 6y ago
wt.social ?

zeruch 6y ago

The regulatory capture is the key bit.

pks016 6y ago

Similar reactions from me. Every other day we see articles those focus on these things. Significantly nothing new; in fact I cringed at some moments. I guess I/we are not the target audience. For cultural impact: Nope. It's gonna stay in people's mind few days. Then again back to normal.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

I'd slot the documentary right next to others that cover things like the horrors of factory farms, slave labor due to consumerism, etc.: while they can be incredibly moving, the impact on your day-to-day is so intangible that it's quite easy to ignore while making no changes to your habits. It reminds me of when I was working at a grocery store in Texas (HEB) and they experimented with hanging the cow's corpse that was being butchered in plain view. I guess in an effort to look fresh. Well, people complained about it. They said that it was gross, and the store went back to butchering before opening. Just looking at meat as pink saran-wrapped blobs that appear on shelves lets people ignore inconvenient truths. And I think we have this type of preference in all parts of our lives from social media to ignoring death itself.

arvinsim 6y ago
As long as people/corporations value convenience and profit, everything else is secondary.

ende 6y ago

Rather than surgical regulation, which as you rightly point out is often prone to capture, I would instead propose a cruder but effective governing instrument: the Pigovian tax Trace the chain of incentivizes further upstream, and what do we find? What animates the system? It’s advertising revenue, of course. So let’s tax the living hell out of advertising revenue. Fundamentally decreasing the profitability of a market is a sure way to disincentivize profiteering interests in it.