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Are social networks inherently bad on their own as you seem to imply though? Don’t you think maximizing profit is one of the root problems. Don’t you think the

Are social networks inherently bad on their own as you seem to imply though? Don’t you think maximizing profit is one of the root problems. Don’t you think the platforms aren’t built to have the most social good, but instead to maximize shareholder value?

kordlessagain 6y ago
Maximizing profit is only a problem if the user model in the code isn't tied directly to the customer payment model. In the case of a social network like Twitter or Facebook, the payment models are embodied in advertiser customer classes, not user classes. If you sign up for Twitter, for example, you don't get a payment model assigned to you that is then optimized to encourage you to continue to pay for the service. Yes, Twitter has user payment models, but those are payment models for self-promotion, which ends up making your interests (as a customer model) more important than mine (as a user model), which just ends up being the same problem all over again. Code that unifies the user and customer models are likely to be more "user friendly" given they don't put a priority on growth of a model that lies outside the user model. Those types of models can focus on what the users want, collectively, and may even profit from making the user's lives better from the use of the product. If anyone here has built or maintained an app and that app has separate user and customer models, then you are part of this problem!
- lefrenchy 6y ago
  I agree that free products like Twitter or Facebook create this problem since advertisers, politicians, and media become the customers, and user attention and engagement becomes the product. I still think the underlying problem is profit though, since these companies offer free product in order to get the largest user base (since social networks benefit from this scale). Maximizing user base size leads to more profit since they have more and larger media, politician, and advertising customers. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram would not be anywhere near as successful if all the users were required to pay a subscription fee. It's an inherent contradiction between social networks and profit that cannot, in my view at least, be resolved.
  - zepto 6y ago
    They wouldn’t be as successful, but maybe that is just a transient stage. It’s possible that as people come to experience and understand how painful they are, there may be more willingness to pay for alternatives.
  - deeperthinker 6y ago
    Do you realize broadcast TV is free, and it is profit oriented. In Britain, bbc is funded by direct tv taxes from people who own television sets and for years no private broadcast company was allowed because they wished to prevent the spread of commercial propaganda through the airwaves. The American model of advertisement funded broadcast proved them wrong and American broadcast industry grew by bounds and leaps while the British were stunted despite the television set being invented in Britain.
    - lefrenchy 6y ago
      It can't be directly compared to social media since it is not a social network, but a broadcasting platform. Not everyone can get on cable TV, there is a barrier to entry. Now they have YouTube, their own websites, and plenty of other revenue streams to generate money for them. Also, I never implied that broadcast TV doesn't have it's own subset of issues. I actually think broadcast TV has a few big problems. It moves from manufactured panic to panic, limits the acceptable discourse in order to be subservient to its donors and funding sources (people with certain political opinions never get a platform), and it benefits in a similar way to social media from social division and disfunction. Media manufactures moral panic and plays in a similar way on human emotion in order to keep viewers watching so that they can make more money. > The American model of advertisement funded broadcast proved them wrong and American broadcast industry grew by bounds and leaps while the British were stunted despite the television set being invented in Britain. I mean maybe we should be asking ourselves "at what cost?" and "who benefited from that?". A bunch of media execs got rich, but did broader society really benefit? It's easy to always defer to "growth" as good and completely ignore the costs.
zepto 6y ago
I think it’s a valid question, but one I’d say ‘yes’ to. In the absence of shareholders or a profit motive, the networks would have the same capacity to influence and manipulate, and so there would still be an incentive for people to seek to control them to obtain this power, for which money is just a proxy. There is no counterfactual ‘on their own’ to compare to. I think we absolutely should be thinking about how to mitigate the incentive problems, which is exactly why I think the article is bad. See kordlessagain’s comment which is a peer to mine here. I don’t necessarily think kordlessagain is right (although they may be), but this is exactly the kind of constructive thinking the article is discouraging, which is why I see it as so terrible.
- lefrenchy 6y ago
  I think in a world where profit is not the motive, you can have room for things like decentralized social networks, worker owned cooperatives with social good as the incentive instead of monopoly and capital. I think that makes power centralization and corruption harder, but it is certainly not immune. I think you're right though that any analysis that does not account for power will lack substance.
  - zepto 6y ago
    We have room for worker owned cooperatives and decentralized social networks already. A world where profit is not the motive, honestly sounds great to me, but it’s not a real counterfactual unless someone explains how it would work. Without such an explanation it’s like talking about a world where nobody needs to eat. You can imagine it would be good, and somehow possible in some sci-fi future, but there are no actual examples.
    - lefrenchy 6y ago
      I actually think this is an interesting problem we face currently. I really liked Mark Fisher's book "Capitalist Realism" in which he touches on how we can no longer imagine a society outside of our capitalist one. I agree though, it's a hard future to sketch out.

kordlessagain 6y ago

Maximizing profit is only a problem if the user model in the code isn't tied directly to the customer payment model. In the case of a social network like Twitter or Facebook, the payment models are embodied in advertiser customer classes, not user classes. If you sign up for Twitter, for example, you don't get a payment model assigned to you that is then optimized to encourage you to continue to pay for the service. Yes, Twitter has user payment models, but those are payment models for self-promotion, which ends up making your interests (as a customer model) more important than mine (as a user model), which just ends up being the same problem all over again. Code that unifies the user and customer models are likely to be more "user friendly" given they don't put a priority on growth of a model that lies outside the user model. Those types of models can focus on what the users want, collectively, and may even profit from making the user's lives better from the use of the product. If anyone here has built or maintained an app and that app has separate user and customer models, then you are part of this problem!

lefrenchy 6y ago
I agree that free products like Twitter or Facebook create this problem since advertisers, politicians, and media become the customers, and user attention and engagement becomes the product. I still think the underlying problem is profit though, since these companies offer free product in order to get the largest user base (since social networks benefit from this scale). Maximizing user base size leads to more profit since they have more and larger media, politician, and advertising customers. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram would not be anywhere near as successful if all the users were required to pay a subscription fee. It's an inherent contradiction between social networks and profit that cannot, in my view at least, be resolved.
- zepto 6y ago
  They wouldn’t be as successful, but maybe that is just a transient stage. It’s possible that as people come to experience and understand how painful they are, there may be more willingness to pay for alternatives.
- deeperthinker 6y ago
  Do you realize broadcast TV is free, and it is profit oriented. In Britain, bbc is funded by direct tv taxes from people who own television sets and for years no private broadcast company was allowed because they wished to prevent the spread of commercial propaganda through the airwaves. The American model of advertisement funded broadcast proved them wrong and American broadcast industry grew by bounds and leaps while the British were stunted despite the television set being invented in Britain.
  - lefrenchy 6y ago
    It can't be directly compared to social media since it is not a social network, but a broadcasting platform. Not everyone can get on cable TV, there is a barrier to entry. Now they have YouTube, their own websites, and plenty of other revenue streams to generate money for them. Also, I never implied that broadcast TV doesn't have it's own subset of issues. I actually think broadcast TV has a few big problems. It moves from manufactured panic to panic, limits the acceptable discourse in order to be subservient to its donors and funding sources (people with certain political opinions never get a platform), and it benefits in a similar way to social media from social division and disfunction. Media manufactures moral panic and plays in a similar way on human emotion in order to keep viewers watching so that they can make more money. > The American model of advertisement funded broadcast proved them wrong and American broadcast industry grew by bounds and leaps while the British were stunted despite the television set being invented in Britain. I mean maybe we should be asking ourselves "at what cost?" and "who benefited from that?". A bunch of media execs got rich, but did broader society really benefit? It's easy to always defer to "growth" as good and completely ignore the costs.

zepto 6y ago

I think it’s a valid question, but one I’d say ‘yes’ to. In the absence of shareholders or a profit motive, the networks would have the same capacity to influence and manipulate, and so there would still be an incentive for people to seek to control them to obtain this power, for which money is just a proxy. There is no counterfactual ‘on their own’ to compare to. I think we absolutely should be thinking about how to mitigate the incentive problems, which is exactly why I think the article is bad. See kordlessagain’s comment which is a peer to mine here. I don’t necessarily think kordlessagain is right (although they may be), but this is exactly the kind of constructive thinking the article is discouraging, which is why I see it as so terrible.

lefrenchy 6y ago
I think in a world where profit is not the motive, you can have room for things like decentralized social networks, worker owned cooperatives with social good as the incentive instead of monopoly and capital. I think that makes power centralization and corruption harder, but it is certainly not immune. I think you're right though that any analysis that does not account for power will lack substance.
- zepto 6y ago
  We have room for worker owned cooperatives and decentralized social networks already. A world where profit is not the motive, honestly sounds great to me, but it’s not a real counterfactual unless someone explains how it would work. Without such an explanation it’s like talking about a world where nobody needs to eat. You can imagine it would be good, and somehow possible in some sci-fi future, but there are no actual examples.
  - lefrenchy 6y ago
    I actually think this is an interesting problem we face currently. I really liked Mark Fisher's book "Capitalist Realism" in which he touches on how we can no longer imagine a society outside of our capitalist one. I agree though, it's a hard future to sketch out.