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Tim Berners-Lee: We need social networks where bad things happen less

115 points by wombatmobile 6y ago

sneak 6y ago
Why does everyone seem to think "something needs to be done" about social media? We didn't blame the cellphone carriers for "allowing" racist groups to coordinate organized violence. Why are we blaming Facebook? Facebook didn't cause or perpetuate the situation in the USA, it simply reflects it, as any communications tool. Let me tell you: Facebook sadly has no monopoly on partisan lies and associated screaming, or rampant misinformation.
- amelius 6y ago
  > Why does everyone think "something needs to be done" about social media? Facebook offers shitty controls, and reads and influences our conversations. Unlike cellphone carriers.
  - sneak 6y ago
    Same could be said for television, newspapers, and the church, all of which have reflected society's misinformation and misconceptions back onto it for a very long time.
    - pixl97 6y ago
      You act like that a lot of things were not done about newspapers or TV?
      - sneak 6y ago
        There are still televangelists and cable news, so I'm pretty sure that the misinformation that people are so upset about on Facebook are still there on TV, too.
- pgsimp 6y ago
  Everybody thinks that, because it is the leftist agenda and pushed in all media channels (who also happen to compete with social networks for clicks). The ultimate goal behind that narrative is of course censorship and control. I'm disappointed that TBL, who seems to be very smart, falls for it so easily. Like when he mentions "feminist bloggers" - these people get toxic replies because they write toxic articles and messages (basically "all men are assholes", so naturally some men get angry about the insult). Haven't experiments in fact found that men receive much more hate messages than women, they just don't make such a fuzz about it? I don't think TBL actually advocates for censorship (except with his "curation" idea) when he asks for better controls. Good muting, blocking and reporting features go a long way towards making social networks usable.
IgorPartola 6y ago
Social networks cannot exist and not devolve on today’s internet. Here is why: 1. They cannot be monetized via anything but ads. Sure a few people will pay for access to a social network. But the majority will not pay $0.01 because the friction of the transaction will prevent them. Moreover, an SN operator can make a lot more money from ads than from subscriptions, at least until proven otherwise. As a result any useful value that an SN provides will quickly be overtaken by more and more intrusive ads. 2. General purpose social networks are relatively boring. I mean how often do you actually hang out with a proportional representation of the general public? No, we want topic or interest based social networks. We want to form consumer tribes, political tribes, sports tribes, etc. We want to talk to people from our school, work, neighborhood, yoga practice, etc. 3. All that is overshadowed by the fact that most people straight up don’t have anything interesting to say. Think of the average person. Do you expect them to wow you with what they are working on even once a month? Chances are, most people will post pictures of their lunch or repost a stupid meme that they finally discovered. Twitter sort of solves this by letting you follow leaders in their fields, but still the SNR is so low that it’s really difficult to find meaningful interactions and unless you are one of those leaders nobody gives a crap about what you shout into the void. The only thing I can see being a path forward is small communities forming their own very limited in size networks with some common authentication platform to help people jump between them. Discord is sort of that, but far cry from a sustainable model.
- snarf21 6y ago
  I agree with you but you have given the solution as well. Add VAT on all digital advertising and keep raising it until ads aren't the least friction way for people. As long as the social media is encouraged to leverage for profit, they will. We have to force them into a model that has different incentives.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    You don’t think that would just lead to even more intrusive ads in an attempt to make them more effective to offset the cost?
Waterluvian 6y ago
I have the perfect site for you then. https://cancel.pointless.click https://cancel.pointless.click
imwillofficial 6y ago
Imwill: “We need a reality where bad things happen less”
mycall 6y ago
LinkedIn? It might go to show that specialized social networks can minimize malintent, although I personally don't use LinkedIn and only assumed since it is business focused, there would be less [d|m]isinformation there.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  Yeah, people aren't going to shitpost if if they think that might impact their ability to find work. So for the most part LI posts are pretty bland. But bland maybe isn't so bad when you compare with the dumpster fire that is FB?
- sneak 6y ago
  LinkedIn doesn't allow you to put your email address into your name field, so that people can contact you directly off of LinkedIn, and naturally prevents you from a) contacting all of your contacts at once, either serially or in a single action, and b) snoops on all of your DMs, in and out. LinkedIn exists to benefit Microsoft, not you.
- herval 6y ago
  You’d think. I’ve seen everything on Linkedin comments and posts, from harassment to openly racist comments. Occam’s Razor explanation here is it’s a smaller problem because it’s _used less_ for general discussion than the other networks
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  My LinkedIn feed is much worse than my Facebook feed. That is not meant as praise for the latter -- it's around 50% irrelevant crap, but the former is 95%+. I suppose it's fair to say that there isn't as much outright malicious disinformation on my LinkedIn feed, but to me it's a distinction without a difference -- crap is crap. edit: And at least when I see crap on Facebook, it's usually my own fault to an extent: it's almost always from someone I follow directly. LinkedIn seems intent on populating my feed with almost entirely stuff from people I don't know, about subjects I couldn't care less about, just because one of my connections "liked" it.
  - 6y ago
1-6 6y ago
I live with the premise that people are inherently bad and build around that concept.
- herval 6y ago
  People aren’t inherently bad, but they’re inherently _different_ - and just like any other animal, people tend to react to _difference_ with mistrust. The thing IMO that social media _amplifies_ is your exposure to people/points of view you wouldn’t ever get in real life, or find people that share your worldview and “bond” with them, forming larger groups.
- doctor_eval 6y ago
  I believe that individuals are almost universally good. Groups, on the other hand...
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
    But does the group dynamic just amplify individual "badness"? Does it turn those "good" people bad or were those "good" people good just because there were certain social obligations and when a group throws off those restraints does it just give people permission to be their "bad" selves? I feel like philosophy has been debating this issue for millennia.
    - doctor_eval 6y ago
      Hi, I think that trying to look at it from the perspective of innate goodness or badness of an individual really misses the point. In my world view, everyone basically has the same motivations[0]. You can understand this in terms of what philosophers call "negative freedoms"[1] - freedom from hunger, freedom from pain, etc (the linked wikipedia article doesn't fully convey this sense, but it's what I learned in philosophy class). People, basically, want to "eat, drink and be merry". Individuals naturally adapt their behaviour to satisfy these freedoms - for example, you get a job so you can be free from hunger and free from danger, among other things. Of course there are positive freedoms and aspirations too, but the basic stuff, like not being hungry, or wanting your kids to do well, is pretty much universal, and deeply informs my view of the world. Anyway -- as an individual, pursuing your desire to eat, drink and be merry seems like a pretty harmless way to go about life. But if that individual joins a group, and some people in that group tell them that the reason they can't get a job is because <insert group here> has <insert cause here> - then their behaviour will reflect that group dynamic for all the reasons we already know, and that behaviour will become self-reinforcing within the group itself. You can see how this has played out in US politics recently; it's very obvious and I don't think I need to give examples. The problem of groups comes about, in my world view, because groups are completely different from individuals. It's far harder to change the opinion of a group, than it is to change the opinion of an individual. It's really a scaling issue; once you get a group of similar people who reinforce their own beliefs - for example, that certain other racial or ethnic "out-groups" threaten their ability to meet their needs - then they are going to feel justified in taking action against those groups. There is no question that the actions of those individuals and of that group are bad, because in my worldview everyone is equal and nobody deserves to be hurt when they are just trying to "eat drink and be merry". But the perpetrator, too, was just doing what they thought was right, in order to achieve the same goals. That they were misguided is entirely different from them being "bad people". That doesn't make the actions of the individual OK, but it obviates the notion of people being innately bad. To be clear: if they do bad things then they still need to suffer the full consequences of the law for their actions (the law's role is not to punish people for being bad, but for doing bad things). It's never OK to hurt people for any reason. But it's senseless to say if an individual who likes puppies, looks after their kids, likes a beer after work, donates 10% of their income to charity, and is also a racist, is "bad", if the latter attitude is the accepted behaviour of the group that they belong to. I feel like I need to be super clear here: my world view is that racism is stupid; racists do bad things; and the leaders of racists groups are scumbags. But humans learn by observing, so a group member who's a racist is, at worst, generally redeemable. So, in my world view, it makes no sense to rank people in general in terms of their individual goodness or badness, because I suspect that most people are basically good; I know this because I can walk the streets of my suburb and not get stabbed. It certainly *does* make sense to rank group leaders in terms of good or bad, because groups ossify group behaviour; the very behaviour of in-groups that I pointed out above can be weaponised by unscrupulous people, which includes the obvious historical figures and many, or perhaps most, politicians. So - to sum up this overly long post - I believe that individuals are almost universally good. Groups, on the other hand... [0] Clearly, this is not absolutely true. Some people have pathologies which maybe make them unlike this - wanting to harm people etc - and some people are willing to hurt others for personal benefit. But in my world view these people are very much in the minority. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty
bmitc 6y ago
Not gonna happen. Social networks just tap into and amplify what’s already going on: humanity.
- hezag 6y ago
  "[...] Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities." - Emma Goldman, "Anarchism: What it Really Stands for" (1917);
  - optimalsolver 6y ago
    Funny she wrote that while Europeans were slaughtering each other by the millions. And what does an un-caged human actually look like?As a social species, we're always going to be in some form of bonded existence.
- Fricken 6y ago
  All mediums of exchange will amplify certain kinds of information, and suppress others, hence the phrase "The Medium is the message". Marshall McLuhan, using his theory of media, was effective at diagnosing the downsides of social media decades long before it became the dominant medium through which our worldviews are shaped. I don't think Tim, nor anybody else in the tech industry* was listening when McLuhan claimed "peer to peer electronic media" would bring out our tribal impulses, but here we are. The internet is a bunch of identity groups, each working with distinct sets of facts, all of them suspicious and distrustful of the others, who enjoy beating on one another for sport. Of course, humans are inherently tribal, and civilization is a hack. For it work we have to suppress, and find safe outlets for our basic tribal impulses. *Zuckerberg has claimed to be a McLuhan fan, but if he actually understands what McLuhan was saying, then he's straight up evil.
yurielt 6y ago
HE says so many interesting things, yet what the guardian chooses to showcase is a minor point in the interview(Particularly when he talks about a topic he is not as knowledgeable of)? Casually enough a point that goes in favour of the nu guardian's agenda ( More censorship on social media). Honestly this is definitely not the first time they do this, this is reaching insulting levels, particularly with such a distinguished guest for the interview.
Barrin92 6y ago
Solid sounds like a nice idea, kind of like Urbit without the feudalism and for normal people but I think it also sounds a lot like the semantic web. (which is no surprise given that Berners-Lee is on board I suppose). I'm not too optimistic about this and I don't think it will see widespread adoption, in particular not without any kind of legal framework behind it. When Berners-Lee talks he still has essentially the early web mindset. Build it, and individuals will come voluntarily because it looks nice and we'll make friendly communities... somehow. I think if that was enough Mastodon would have already replaced Twitter.
- indigochill 6y ago
  > I think if that was enough Mastodon would have already replaced Twitter. For some of us, it has. ;) For others who are fine with Twitter, well, there's still Twitter. I realized earlier today we're still in the era of AOL. Only now AOL is called FAANG and instead of snail-mailing you plastic discs, they pre-install on all your hardware. The people who either prefer the corporate ecosystem or simply don't know any better hang out there while the wild west waits just outside.
TameAntelope 6y ago
Social networks ought to be less... social. Instead of text boxes, we should provide options for reactions and that's it. Maybe there are a lot of options, but the idea that anyone can share any thought at any time is probably too much. Limiting how people can interact and reward people for reacting positively, is a great 1/2 punch way to prevent the nastiest people from entering into a positive feedback loop. Yeah, it's not as free, but I think we've gathered enough evidence that freedom (in this social media context) causes more problems than it solves.
- Jakobeha 6y ago
  Your approach is actually used a lot. There are a lot of apps already out there which only allow you to communicate with reactions (e.g. Clash Royale). However, these reactions seem very artificial and impersonal. There is no real community, and you never feel like people are truly being "nice" to you because they might only be doing it for the in-game reward. Social media as is is already too impersonal, just reactions would make it worse. I think what we really need is exclusivity and accountability. So you can't just be messaged by random people, and if people messaging you are being assholes they will at minimum be kicked off your network. I think this is similar to how "real" friend groups work, how they worked before social media. The main problem is it's hard to find new people.
  - TameAntelope 6y ago
    Yep, I saw how communication in M:tG Arena worked, and I thought about how much less toxic that community is, possibly as a result. There's still ways to troll, but they're limited and hard to cause any real trouble with. My problem with accountability is that it doesn't seem to matter. Facebook users have shown us that even linking terrible content back to real people won't stop the real people from sharing those terrible content. Anonymity (or its inverse) isn't the answer. Has anyone tried putting up a paywall to use comments? I feel like surely someone has, but I can't think of an org off the top of my head.
  - TheRealNGenius 6y ago
    Just curious, what would be your take on reactions combined with text comments? I think that it would kind of be like giving a face to an otherwise impersonal comment, kind of like emoji. Not really sure though, currently experimenting on this kind of idea: https://www.wndr.xyz https://www.wndr.xyz
EGreg 6y ago
My cofounder and I met Tim and his team back in 2015, when they had just started building it. We actually had about a 5 year head start on them, and wound up building this social network. Here's what I think the future of social networking will be: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-social-networking/answer/Gregory-Magarshak https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-social-networkin...
thomastjeffery 6y ago
We don't need "social networks". We need forums, or something similar. The problem with social networks is moderation. Moderation can only really be done well by users; not by some corporate top-down approach like Facebook, Twitter, et al have been trying.
- halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
  Couldn't agree more. The community self-policing (and having the tools to do it correctly) is the path to actually sustainable online communities.
  - amelius 6y ago
    How would that work for the echo-chambers of conspiracy theorists?
    - mistermann 6y ago
      I mostly only go to /r/conspiracy, but there is plenty of disagreement on the epistemic status of the various ideas discussed there, way more than you'll find in most any other subreddit.
    - halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
      I never said the tools are meant to produce certain communities. My point was centrally controlled communities are futile since it's a losing battle. The only way to sustain healthy communities is to have them self policing. Healthy meaning sustainable, not "of a certain ilk".
    - thomastjeffery 6y ago
      There hasn't been a viable solution proposed for those.
rossdavidh 6y ago
I have a lot of respect for Tim Berners-Lee, but he's basically incorrect about this. The problem with social networks is not a technology problem, it is fundamental to what social networks are. We don't call Stack Overflow a social network, because it's got a purpose, even though it has a lot of the same features as facebook. The problem with social networks isn't the software, it's that they aren't for a particular purpose, because if they did most people wouldn't go there (as most people don't go to Stack Overflow, because most people aren't programmers). If you want to make a social network with a billion users, you have to make it general purpose, and that means you do not have a narrow enough focus to keep the conversation on task (because there is no task). This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting, because there is no focus/task to keep it from doing so. They're "social", with everything that makes socializing (facial expressions, tone of voice, only so many people able to talk at once) removed. You're not going to fix that with technology, because the thing that needs "fixing" is fundamental to what they are. The problem with social networks, is that they're social.
- aeturnum 6y ago
  I agree with you that the "networking" aspect of social networks is functioning, but I happen to think it is functioning to make the "social" aspect less pleasant. > This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting You are right that this will always happen, but I do not think it will be the dominant interaction. One of the reasons this interaction comes up so much is that platforms optimize for it - bickering and shouting is engaging. It gets clicks and eyeballs and shares. Jerry Springer was a popular tv show (and good for that team) but it's wrong to say that we can only make TV like Jerry Springer. There's a great deal of research in the UX / Social Science world on "affordances" - UI features basically. They're the nouns and verbs that we have in digital spaces. Often the research is very basic but it is out there. I think social media companies could do a lot better with the affordances they give to people. They could be more playful. They could be more free form. They could slow down conversations where people are rapidly tagging each other and sentiment analysis suggests they are fighting. Etc, etc. The human brain is a very complex thing and one of its primary purposes, as far as we can tell, is to be social - the thing you say isn't a task. I don't believe being social isn't a task. I just think we're very bad at helping our brains be social (a thing they evolved to do for millions of years) in a medium we just invented maybe fifty years ago. We can get better, but only if we try.
ekianjo 6y ago
> as if to underline that the human race may now have its priorities slightly wrong, at 345,000, his Twitter followers number less than 5% of Piers Morgan’s. Are we supposed to celebrate whoever created the plumbing or the interface? After all, Tim is not responsible for the user adoption and for all the user content created out there. If it were not for WWW it would have been someone/something else and nobody would know Tim right now.
- jclulow 6y ago
  I would follow my plumber on Twitter before I would follow Piers Morgan.
kumarvvr 6y ago
If the social network is a reflection of society as a whole, then it's not possible to ensure bad things happen less. What is required is to shift focus from social networks to the society. Removing hate, bigotry, evil and social factors that induce crime ought to be the focus. A society cannot be reformed if it is corrupt at its core, no matter how many controls you put on public communication systems. The problem has to be addressed from within, not from outside controls.
b20000 6y ago
did you know that the internet was invented by this guy and not Tim Berners-Lee? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cailliau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cailliau
- dyllon 6y ago
  Yes, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, and is the Director of the W3C.
ppf 6y ago
We need to get off the internet, and re-discover how to connect with real humans and form lasting social bonds. I can't imagine how different (and more socially vibrant) life was 40 years ago.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  It wasn't that more socially vibrant really. The same issues existed back then. We just moved all of them online with us :)
mro_name 6y ago
Foster the Indieweb where participating takes owning a domain. That decelerates the trolls and doesn't harm the others. Entry must be possible for laypeople, however, and can be, if a few tools (like my https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo) exist and improve. And self-host. Very few people burn their own garden. All it takes is an adult approach where candy isn't free.
crandalldawn 6y ago
I am so happy my Husband is back after 2 years of break up.. You are the best relationship Doctor_________ Robinson.buckler @ yahoo. com…….

115 points by wombatmobile 6y ago

Why does everyone seem to think "something needs to be done" about social media? We didn't blame the cellphone carriers for "allowing" racist groups to coordinate organized violence. Why are we blaming Facebook? Facebook didn't cause or perpetuate the situation in the USA, it simply reflects it, as any communications tool. Let me tell you: Facebook sadly has no monopoly on partisan lies and associated screaming, or rampant misinformation.

amelius 6y ago
> Why does everyone think "something needs to be done" about social media? Facebook offers shitty controls, and reads and influences our conversations. Unlike cellphone carriers.
- sneak 6y ago
  Same could be said for television, newspapers, and the church, all of which have reflected society's misinformation and misconceptions back onto it for a very long time.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    You act like that a lot of things were not done about newspapers or TV?
    - sneak 6y ago
      There are still televangelists and cable news, so I'm pretty sure that the misinformation that people are so upset about on Facebook are still there on TV, too.
pgsimp 6y ago
Everybody thinks that, because it is the leftist agenda and pushed in all media channels (who also happen to compete with social networks for clicks). The ultimate goal behind that narrative is of course censorship and control. I'm disappointed that TBL, who seems to be very smart, falls for it so easily. Like when he mentions "feminist bloggers" - these people get toxic replies because they write toxic articles and messages (basically "all men are assholes", so naturally some men get angry about the insult). Haven't experiments in fact found that men receive much more hate messages than women, they just don't make such a fuzz about it? I don't think TBL actually advocates for censorship (except with his "curation" idea) when he asks for better controls. Good muting, blocking and reporting features go a long way towards making social networks usable.

IgorPartola 6y ago

Social networks cannot exist and not devolve on today’s internet. Here is why: 1. They cannot be monetized via anything but ads. Sure a few people will pay for access to a social network. But the majority will not pay $0.01 because the friction of the transaction will prevent them. Moreover, an SN operator can make a lot more money from ads than from subscriptions, at least until proven otherwise. As a result any useful value that an SN provides will quickly be overtaken by more and more intrusive ads. 2. General purpose social networks are relatively boring. I mean how often do you actually hang out with a proportional representation of the general public? No, we want topic or interest based social networks. We want to form consumer tribes, political tribes, sports tribes, etc. We want to talk to people from our school, work, neighborhood, yoga practice, etc. 3. All that is overshadowed by the fact that most people straight up don’t have anything interesting to say. Think of the average person. Do you expect them to wow you with what they are working on even once a month? Chances are, most people will post pictures of their lunch or repost a stupid meme that they finally discovered. Twitter sort of solves this by letting you follow leaders in their fields, but still the SNR is so low that it’s really difficult to find meaningful interactions and unless you are one of those leaders nobody gives a crap about what you shout into the void. The only thing I can see being a path forward is small communities forming their own very limited in size networks with some common authentication platform to help people jump between them. Discord is sort of that, but far cry from a sustainable model.

snarf21 6y ago
I agree with you but you have given the solution as well. Add VAT on all digital advertising and keep raising it until ads aren't the least friction way for people. As long as the social media is encouraged to leverage for profit, they will. We have to force them into a model that has different incentives.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  You don’t think that would just lead to even more intrusive ads in an attempt to make them more effective to offset the cost?

Waterluvian 6y ago

I have the perfect site for you then. https://cancel.pointless.click https://cancel.pointless.click

imwillofficial 6y ago

Imwill: “We need a reality where bad things happen less”

mycall 6y ago

LinkedIn? It might go to show that specialized social networks can minimize malintent, although I personally don't use LinkedIn and only assumed since it is business focused, there would be less [d|m]isinformation there.

UncleOxidant 6y ago
Yeah, people aren't going to shitpost if if they think that might impact their ability to find work. So for the most part LI posts are pretty bland. But bland maybe isn't so bad when you compare with the dumpster fire that is FB?
sneak 6y ago
LinkedIn doesn't allow you to put your email address into your name field, so that people can contact you directly off of LinkedIn, and naturally prevents you from a) contacting all of your contacts at once, either serially or in a single action, and b) snoops on all of your DMs, in and out. LinkedIn exists to benefit Microsoft, not you.
herval 6y ago
You’d think. I’ve seen everything on Linkedin comments and posts, from harassment to openly racist comments. Occam’s Razor explanation here is it’s a smaller problem because it’s _used less_ for general discussion than the other networks
boring_twenties 6y ago
My LinkedIn feed is much worse than my Facebook feed. That is not meant as praise for the latter -- it's around 50% irrelevant crap, but the former is 95%+. I suppose it's fair to say that there isn't as much outright malicious disinformation on my LinkedIn feed, but to me it's a distinction without a difference -- crap is crap. edit: And at least when I see crap on Facebook, it's usually my own fault to an extent: it's almost always from someone I follow directly. LinkedIn seems intent on populating my feed with almost entirely stuff from people I don't know, about subjects I couldn't care less about, just because one of my connections "liked" it.
- 6y ago

1-6 6y ago

I live with the premise that people are inherently bad and build around that concept.

herval 6y ago
People aren’t inherently bad, but they’re inherently _different_ - and just like any other animal, people tend to react to _difference_ with mistrust. The thing IMO that social media _amplifies_ is your exposure to people/points of view you wouldn’t ever get in real life, or find people that share your worldview and “bond” with them, forming larger groups.
doctor_eval 6y ago
I believe that individuals are almost universally good. Groups, on the other hand...
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  But does the group dynamic just amplify individual "badness"? Does it turn those "good" people bad or were those "good" people good just because there were certain social obligations and when a group throws off those restraints does it just give people permission to be their "bad" selves? I feel like philosophy has been debating this issue for millennia.
  - doctor_eval 6y ago
    Hi, I think that trying to look at it from the perspective of innate goodness or badness of an individual really misses the point. In my world view, everyone basically has the same motivations[0]. You can understand this in terms of what philosophers call "negative freedoms"[1] - freedom from hunger, freedom from pain, etc (the linked wikipedia article doesn't fully convey this sense, but it's what I learned in philosophy class). People, basically, want to "eat, drink and be merry". Individuals naturally adapt their behaviour to satisfy these freedoms - for example, you get a job so you can be free from hunger and free from danger, among other things. Of course there are positive freedoms and aspirations too, but the basic stuff, like not being hungry, or wanting your kids to do well, is pretty much universal, and deeply informs my view of the world. Anyway -- as an individual, pursuing your desire to eat, drink and be merry seems like a pretty harmless way to go about life. But if that individual joins a group, and some people in that group tell them that the reason they can't get a job is because <insert group here> has <insert cause here> - then their behaviour will reflect that group dynamic for all the reasons we already know, and that behaviour will become self-reinforcing within the group itself. You can see how this has played out in US politics recently; it's very obvious and I don't think I need to give examples. The problem of groups comes about, in my world view, because groups are completely different from individuals. It's far harder to change the opinion of a group, than it is to change the opinion of an individual. It's really a scaling issue; once you get a group of similar people who reinforce their own beliefs - for example, that certain other racial or ethnic "out-groups" threaten their ability to meet their needs - then they are going to feel justified in taking action against those groups. There is no question that the actions of those individuals and of that group are bad, because in my worldview everyone is equal and nobody deserves to be hurt when they are just trying to "eat drink and be merry". But the perpetrator, too, was just doing what they thought was right, in order to achieve the same goals. That they were misguided is entirely different from them being "bad people". That doesn't make the actions of the individual OK, but it obviates the notion of people being innately bad. To be clear: if they do bad things then they still need to suffer the full consequences of the law for their actions (the law's role is not to punish people for being bad, but for doing bad things). It's never OK to hurt people for any reason. But it's senseless to say if an individual who likes puppies, looks after their kids, likes a beer after work, donates 10% of their income to charity, and is also a racist, is "bad", if the latter attitude is the accepted behaviour of the group that they belong to. I feel like I need to be super clear here: my world view is that racism is stupid; racists do bad things; and the leaders of racists groups are scumbags. But humans learn by observing, so a group member who's a racist is, at worst, generally redeemable. So, in my world view, it makes no sense to rank people in general in terms of their individual goodness or badness, because I suspect that most people are basically good; I know this because I can walk the streets of my suburb and not get stabbed. It certainly *does* make sense to rank group leaders in terms of good or bad, because groups ossify group behaviour; the very behaviour of in-groups that I pointed out above can be weaponised by unscrupulous people, which includes the obvious historical figures and many, or perhaps most, politicians. So - to sum up this overly long post - I believe that individuals are almost universally good. Groups, on the other hand... [0] Clearly, this is not absolutely true. Some people have pathologies which maybe make them unlike this - wanting to harm people etc - and some people are willing to hurt others for personal benefit. But in my world view these people are very much in the minority. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty

bmitc 6y ago

Not gonna happen. Social networks just tap into and amplify what’s already going on: humanity.

hezag 6y ago
"[...] Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities." - Emma Goldman, "Anarchism: What it Really Stands for" (1917);
- optimalsolver 6y ago
  Funny she wrote that while Europeans were slaughtering each other by the millions. And what does an un-caged human actually look like?As a social species, we're always going to be in some form of bonded existence.
Fricken 6y ago
All mediums of exchange will amplify certain kinds of information, and suppress others, hence the phrase "The Medium is the message". Marshall McLuhan, using his theory of media, was effective at diagnosing the downsides of social media decades long before it became the dominant medium through which our worldviews are shaped. I don't think Tim, nor anybody else in the tech industry* was listening when McLuhan claimed "peer to peer electronic media" would bring out our tribal impulses, but here we are. The internet is a bunch of identity groups, each working with distinct sets of facts, all of them suspicious and distrustful of the others, who enjoy beating on one another for sport. Of course, humans are inherently tribal, and civilization is a hack. For it work we have to suppress, and find safe outlets for our basic tribal impulses. *Zuckerberg has claimed to be a McLuhan fan, but if he actually understands what McLuhan was saying, then he's straight up evil.

yurielt 6y ago

HE says so many interesting things, yet what the guardian chooses to showcase is a minor point in the interview(Particularly when he talks about a topic he is not as knowledgeable of)? Casually enough a point that goes in favour of the nu guardian's agenda ( More censorship on social media). Honestly this is definitely not the first time they do this, this is reaching insulting levels, particularly with such a distinguished guest for the interview.

Barrin92 6y ago

Solid sounds like a nice idea, kind of like Urbit without the feudalism and for normal people but I think it also sounds a lot like the semantic web. (which is no surprise given that Berners-Lee is on board I suppose). I'm not too optimistic about this and I don't think it will see widespread adoption, in particular not without any kind of legal framework behind it. When Berners-Lee talks he still has essentially the early web mindset. Build it, and individuals will come voluntarily because it looks nice and we'll make friendly communities... somehow. I think if that was enough Mastodon would have already replaced Twitter.

indigochill 6y ago
> I think if that was enough Mastodon would have already replaced Twitter. For some of us, it has. ;) For others who are fine with Twitter, well, there's still Twitter. I realized earlier today we're still in the era of AOL. Only now AOL is called FAANG and instead of snail-mailing you plastic discs, they pre-install on all your hardware. The people who either prefer the corporate ecosystem or simply don't know any better hang out there while the wild west waits just outside.

TameAntelope 6y ago

Social networks ought to be less... social. Instead of text boxes, we should provide options for reactions and that's it. Maybe there are a lot of options, but the idea that anyone can share any thought at any time is probably too much. Limiting how people can interact and reward people for reacting positively, is a great 1/2 punch way to prevent the nastiest people from entering into a positive feedback loop. Yeah, it's not as free, but I think we've gathered enough evidence that freedom (in this social media context) causes more problems than it solves.

Jakobeha 6y ago
Your approach is actually used a lot. There are a lot of apps already out there which only allow you to communicate with reactions (e.g. Clash Royale). However, these reactions seem very artificial and impersonal. There is no real community, and you never feel like people are truly being "nice" to you because they might only be doing it for the in-game reward. Social media as is is already too impersonal, just reactions would make it worse. I think what we really need is exclusivity and accountability. So you can't just be messaged by random people, and if people messaging you are being assholes they will at minimum be kicked off your network. I think this is similar to how "real" friend groups work, how they worked before social media. The main problem is it's hard to find new people.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  Yep, I saw how communication in M:tG Arena worked, and I thought about how much less toxic that community is, possibly as a result. There's still ways to troll, but they're limited and hard to cause any real trouble with. My problem with accountability is that it doesn't seem to matter. Facebook users have shown us that even linking terrible content back to real people won't stop the real people from sharing those terrible content. Anonymity (or its inverse) isn't the answer. Has anyone tried putting up a paywall to use comments? I feel like surely someone has, but I can't think of an org off the top of my head.
- TheRealNGenius 6y ago
  Just curious, what would be your take on reactions combined with text comments? I think that it would kind of be like giving a face to an otherwise impersonal comment, kind of like emoji. Not really sure though, currently experimenting on this kind of idea: https://www.wndr.xyz https://www.wndr.xyz

EGreg 6y ago

My cofounder and I met Tim and his team back in 2015, when they had just started building it. We actually had about a 5 year head start on them, and wound up building this social network. Here's what I think the future of social networking will be: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-social-networking/answer/Gregory-Magarshak https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-social-networkin...

thomastjeffery 6y ago

We don't need "social networks". We need forums, or something similar. The problem with social networks is moderation. Moderation can only really be done well by users; not by some corporate top-down approach like Facebook, Twitter, et al have been trying.

halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
Couldn't agree more. The community self-policing (and having the tools to do it correctly) is the path to actually sustainable online communities.
- amelius 6y ago
  How would that work for the echo-chambers of conspiracy theorists?
  - mistermann 6y ago
    I mostly only go to /r/conspiracy, but there is plenty of disagreement on the epistemic status of the various ideas discussed there, way more than you'll find in most any other subreddit.
  - halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
    I never said the tools are meant to produce certain communities. My point was centrally controlled communities are futile since it's a losing battle. The only way to sustain healthy communities is to have them self policing. Healthy meaning sustainable, not "of a certain ilk".
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    There hasn't been a viable solution proposed for those.

rossdavidh 6y ago

I have a lot of respect for Tim Berners-Lee, but he's basically incorrect about this. The problem with social networks is not a technology problem, it is fundamental to what social networks are. We don't call Stack Overflow a social network, because it's got a purpose, even though it has a lot of the same features as facebook. The problem with social networks isn't the software, it's that they aren't for a particular purpose, because if they did most people wouldn't go there (as most people don't go to Stack Overflow, because most people aren't programmers). If you want to make a social network with a billion users, you have to make it general purpose, and that means you do not have a narrow enough focus to keep the conversation on task (because there is no task). This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting, because there is no focus/task to keep it from doing so. They're "social", with everything that makes socializing (facial expressions, tone of voice, only so many people able to talk at once) removed. You're not going to fix that with technology, because the thing that needs "fixing" is fundamental to what they are. The problem with social networks, is that they're social.

aeturnum 6y ago
I agree with you that the "networking" aspect of social networks is functioning, but I happen to think it is functioning to make the "social" aspect less pleasant. > This means the conversation falls back to tribal bickering and shouting You are right that this will always happen, but I do not think it will be the dominant interaction. One of the reasons this interaction comes up so much is that platforms optimize for it - bickering and shouting is engaging. It gets clicks and eyeballs and shares. Jerry Springer was a popular tv show (and good for that team) but it's wrong to say that we can only make TV like Jerry Springer. There's a great deal of research in the UX / Social Science world on "affordances" - UI features basically. They're the nouns and verbs that we have in digital spaces. Often the research is very basic but it is out there. I think social media companies could do a lot better with the affordances they give to people. They could be more playful. They could be more free form. They could slow down conversations where people are rapidly tagging each other and sentiment analysis suggests they are fighting. Etc, etc. The human brain is a very complex thing and one of its primary purposes, as far as we can tell, is to be social - the thing you say isn't a task. I don't believe being social isn't a task. I just think we're very bad at helping our brains be social (a thing they evolved to do for millions of years) in a medium we just invented maybe fifty years ago. We can get better, but only if we try.

ekianjo 6y ago

> as if to underline that the human race may now have its priorities slightly wrong, at 345,000, his Twitter followers number less than 5% of Piers Morgan’s. Are we supposed to celebrate whoever created the plumbing or the interface? After all, Tim is not responsible for the user adoption and for all the user content created out there. If it were not for WWW it would have been someone/something else and nobody would know Tim right now.

jclulow 6y ago
I would follow my plumber on Twitter before I would follow Piers Morgan.

kumarvvr 6y ago

If the social network is a reflection of society as a whole, then it's not possible to ensure bad things happen less. What is required is to shift focus from social networks to the society. Removing hate, bigotry, evil and social factors that induce crime ought to be the focus. A society cannot be reformed if it is corrupt at its core, no matter how many controls you put on public communication systems. The problem has to be addressed from within, not from outside controls.

b20000 6y ago

did you know that the internet was invented by this guy and not Tim Berners-Lee? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cailliau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cailliau

dyllon 6y ago
Yes, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, and is the Director of the W3C.

ppf 6y ago

We need to get off the internet, and re-discover how to connect with real humans and form lasting social bonds. I can't imagine how different (and more socially vibrant) life was 40 years ago.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
It wasn't that more socially vibrant really. The same issues existed back then. We just moved all of them online with us :)

mro_name 6y ago

Foster the Indieweb where participating takes owning a domain. That decelerates the trolls and doesn't harm the others. Entry must be possible for laypeople, however, and can be, if a few tools (like my https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo) exist and improve. And self-host. Very few people burn their own garden. All it takes is an adult approach where candy isn't free.

crandalldawn 6y ago

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