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> The value is in what the users are providing not the platform. Reddit, Hacker News, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Google Everything. The con

by yunohn 5y ago

> The value is in what the users are providing not the platform. Reddit, Hacker News, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Google Everything. The content is provided by the users for free to the platforms. What is missing from your rant is, why would any platform exist then? Nobody is building them without expecting to profit off the mutual relationship. I never understand the POV that everything should somehow magically be provided for free. You want a BBForum, go right ahead. But every platform you listed is significantly more complex than that.

nwienert 5y ago
There’s plenty of room between the current vig (0%) and profits. Which is how I’ve come around to blockchains for social. Not just for equity, but trust: you can see the governance contracts / how equitable / how easy to change the deal is.
- yunohn 5y ago
  > Which is how I’ve come around to blockchains for social. I’m speechless. If you’re actually serious, could you give some examples of the social networking apps/features you are using via the blockchain?
  - nwienert 5y ago
    There's a ton of small DAOs, I don't think anyone has scaled up yet. But given you're speechless, hard to assume you're even open to the idea.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      I’ve never heard anyone describe a DAO as a social network. Could you explain what that means in relation to more commonly known social networks (FB, Reddit, HN)?
      - nwienert 5y ago
        There are many, but the best are smaller for now. Many feel a bit more akin to the early web, on purpose. - https://www.fwb.help https://www.fwb.help - https://mirror.xyz https://mirror.xyz
        yunohn 5y ago
        I never understand why crypt enthusiasts can’t explain their crypto applications? Everything is DYOR and links to landing pages or white papers.
        nwienert 5y ago
        I agree on this point more generally in the space, but for DAO's a bit different. Clubs are social and often designed to have a barrier to entry, this mirrors the real world. Small communities are higher quality, so this is rational.
andyferris 5y ago
They aren’t really more complicated than Wikipedia, though. Because it’s all network effects, it either needs to be a centralised walled garden (even Wikipedia fits here to certain extent) or else a federated system like email. Whether the business model that maintains a centralised system is for-profit or not is basically irrelevant. Facebook would have as much difficulty taking over wikipedia’s leadership in online encycolpedias as Wikipedia would have trying to become the dominant social network. It’s just a matter of who got there first (at least until they possibly get displaced by something else that users drift toward).
- yunohn 5y ago
  > They aren’t really more complicated than Wikipedia, though. I’m not sure how to reply to someone that compares multimedia, feature-filled social networks to a mostly-read-only information store.
  - cybernautique 5y ago
    And yet you did reply, with apparent incredulity. Wikipedia is a method by which users generate, disseminate, and moderate content of a specific media type. Facebook, et al., don't innovate on the content being produced, because they do not produce it. They innovate on removing friction to the first two, or producing new methods for the third. Yeah, they really aren't that much more complex. More complicated, I'll grant you, simply owing to the vast amount of cruft and legacy that such privacy-eating titans inherently accrue. But the actual media type is pretty irrelevant as far as I care.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      > And yet you did reply, with apparent incredulity. While you can be pedantic, I did not reply to their actual points. > Yeah, they really aren't that much more complex. This really reminds me of the infamous HN Dropbox comment, but worse.
      - cybernautique 5y ago
_Understated_ 5y ago
> But every platform you listed is significantly more complex than that. I'd agree with that on the surface but those platforms you listed are basically forums with a new name! They provide very little over and above that. So, in actual fact, they're only made more complex as a result of rules added by the owners to squeeze as much data from every visitor as is legally (and illegally in some cases) allowed! So they provide nothing of value above a regular forum imo. In reality, they are lists of submissions from end users that have been categorized, however the categorization engine happens to be algorithmically generated, rather than ordered by date. And the companies themselves are doing whatever it takes to monetize your eyeballs regardless of whether it affects your health or not! They are abusing every visitor to the maximum extent that the laws allow! Their business model is to centralize all forums on their platform and for that there is a massive cost at that scale. That's their choice to host all forums! However to pay for that they are abusing every visitor. Using Reddit, a single forum about Ubuntu (/r/Ubuntu) would cost around $5 a month on DO for someone to host themselves. Using something like BBForum or something similar would not require much in the way of maintenance. The point I am making is that all this stuff existed long before the big tech platforms. It can easily exist without them too. They are not actually providing anything of any worth that couldn't easily be found elsewhere (well, used to be found elsewhere!).
- yunohn 5y ago
  > They provide very little over and above that. For people who love BBForums (like HN tbh), everything may seem “like a forum”. But that is very reductive and uninspired. There are various features provided by Snapchat (camera, filters, games) and FB (marketplace, messenger) that nobody would ever compare to a BBForum/Wikipedia. They are inherently complex and valuable to the majority of their users.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > There are various features provided by Snapchat (camera, filters, games) and FB (marketplace, messenger) that nobody would ever compare to a BBForum/Wikipedia. Yeah. That's because all those features used to be separate applications, not tied to BBForum/Wikipedia engine. They're all complex, but they're also orthogonal to the platform, and their implementations are pretty much commodities. The only value provided here is by integration with platform (particularly UX-wise). Which seems fine, except the only reason this is valuable in the first place, is because the platforms prevent everyone else from doing such integrations themselves.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> What is missing from your rant is, why would any platform exist then? Nobody is building them without expecting to profit off the mutual relationship. Plenty of smaller platforms exist for reasons other than profit (e.g. altruism, or desire for feeling important). But for-profit platforms are fine too! Mutually beneficial relationships are a good thing. But we're talking about Facebook, et al. here - advertising-based platforms. They way they're making profit off the relationship is not through mutually beneficial exchange of value. The platforms instead are abusing their position of power in the relationship to pull the users in, keep them glued, and expose to maximum amount of advertising. This is not a case "here's an ad box because we have some server costs to cover, you know". These platforms are thoroughly optimized to maximize ad revenue. Every feature they just "can't seem to get right", every weird UX blunder, every feature that's obvious but missing for unexplained reasons[0] - all that are not mistakes, but decisions to give you a shitty product in order to make you more exploitable[1]. Or, in short: as a user, your actual relationship with big social media platforms is the same as between a cow and a farm. Cows are there to be milked, and make more cows for milking. They're not the ones who get to say how the farm is run. > I never understand the POV that everything should somehow magically be provided for free. Right? They have costs, after all. But you're looking at the wrong people. This expectations wasn't created by regular people - it was created by companies who figured they can do the ultimate undercut of their competition by offering their product for free, and make money through a side channel. Since most people are extremely price sensitive, nobody can compete on price with $0 - so the model stuck, and it's because of this that people expect everything on the Internet to be free. > But every platform you listed is significantly more complex than that. That's mostly because they have more money than they know what to do with, and are competing against other platforms with similar amount of spending cash. Most of that complexity goes to supporting the advertising aspects of the platform and the dark patterns that keep the users in their pens. I mean, modern factory farms are significantly more complex than the stereotypical family farm of centuries past - but as a cow, you probably don't want to experience that complexity. -- [0] - E.g. sorting your feed by date, or searching posts by date, or a "dislike" button, or ... [1] - One interesting facet of attention economy is that it seeks to make every task as inefficient as possible - because money is being made on friction. The longer it takes you to do a thing, the longer you can be exposed to advertising. The more frustrated you are, the more susceptible you are to that advertising.
breakfastduck 5y ago
People are not expecting everything to be free at all. But they're making the point that if you are advertising something as 'free' when you're actually paying through the nose by having every piece of personal data extracted and sold to the highest bidder, it should not be advertised as 'free'. Becuase it isn't. Make it free, or make it paid, or if you really must use the data harvesting model then at the very least make it very clear that it is not free because you are paying via a different means.
- ryan93 5y ago
  How are you paying through the nose? i never click on ads so every ad service ive used for the last twenty years really has been free.
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    Did you just stop reading the comment at that phrase? You are paying through the data collected, regardless of whether you engage with the adverts or not.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      What are you paying though. Can anyone explain the consequences to me?
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  Indeed. They are giving trinkets to the natives for their land. Maybe we need to educate the natives on how valuable their land actually is.
criddell 5y ago
> why would any platform exist then? If your users are unwilling to pay for the service, then perhaps the value it provides is zero and it shouldn't exist.
jppittma 5y ago
What's missing from his rant is the inclusion of wikipedia, showing that platforms can exist without an expectation of profit. What's more, I'm not entirely convinced, we as a society would be worse off without most of the above.

by yunohn 5y ago

nwienert 5y ago

There’s plenty of room between the current vig (0%) and profits. Which is how I’ve come around to blockchains for social. Not just for equity, but trust: you can see the governance contracts / how equitable / how easy to change the deal is.

yunohn 5y ago
> Which is how I’ve come around to blockchains for social. I’m speechless. If you’re actually serious, could you give some examples of the social networking apps/features you are using via the blockchain?
- nwienert 5y ago
  There's a ton of small DAOs, I don't think anyone has scaled up yet. But given you're speechless, hard to assume you're even open to the idea.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    I’ve never heard anyone describe a DAO as a social network. Could you explain what that means in relation to more commonly known social networks (FB, Reddit, HN)?
    - nwienert 5y ago
      There are many, but the best are smaller for now. Many feel a bit more akin to the early web, on purpose. - https://www.fwb.help https://www.fwb.help - https://mirror.xyz https://mirror.xyz
      - yunohn 5y ago
        I never understand why crypt enthusiasts can’t explain their crypto applications? Everything is DYOR and links to landing pages or white papers.
        nwienert 5y ago
        I agree on this point more generally in the space, but for DAO's a bit different. Clubs are social and often designed to have a barrier to entry, this mirrors the real world. Small communities are higher quality, so this is rational.

andyferris 5y ago

They aren’t really more complicated than Wikipedia, though. Because it’s all network effects, it either needs to be a centralised walled garden (even Wikipedia fits here to certain extent) or else a federated system like email. Whether the business model that maintains a centralised system is for-profit or not is basically irrelevant. Facebook would have as much difficulty taking over wikipedia’s leadership in online encycolpedias as Wikipedia would have trying to become the dominant social network. It’s just a matter of who got there first (at least until they possibly get displaced by something else that users drift toward).

yunohn 5y ago
> They aren’t really more complicated than Wikipedia, though. I’m not sure how to reply to someone that compares multimedia, feature-filled social networks to a mostly-read-only information store.
- cybernautique 5y ago
  And yet you did reply, with apparent incredulity. Wikipedia is a method by which users generate, disseminate, and moderate content of a specific media type. Facebook, et al., don't innovate on the content being produced, because they do not produce it. They innovate on removing friction to the first two, or producing new methods for the third. Yeah, they really aren't that much more complex. More complicated, I'll grant you, simply owing to the vast amount of cruft and legacy that such privacy-eating titans inherently accrue. But the actual media type is pretty irrelevant as far as I care.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    > And yet you did reply, with apparent incredulity. While you can be pedantic, I did not reply to their actual points. > Yeah, they really aren't that much more complex. This really reminds me of the infamous HN Dropbox comment, but worse.
    - cybernautique 5y ago

_Understated_ 5y ago

> But every platform you listed is significantly more complex than that. I'd agree with that on the surface but those platforms you listed are basically forums with a new name! They provide very little over and above that. So, in actual fact, they're only made more complex as a result of rules added by the owners to squeeze as much data from every visitor as is legally (and illegally in some cases) allowed! So they provide nothing of value above a regular forum imo. In reality, they are lists of submissions from end users that have been categorized, however the categorization engine happens to be algorithmically generated, rather than ordered by date. And the companies themselves are doing whatever it takes to monetize your eyeballs regardless of whether it affects your health or not! They are abusing every visitor to the maximum extent that the laws allow! Their business model is to centralize all forums on their platform and for that there is a massive cost at that scale. That's their choice to host all forums! However to pay for that they are abusing every visitor. Using Reddit, a single forum about Ubuntu (/r/Ubuntu) would cost around $5 a month on DO for someone to host themselves. Using something like BBForum or something similar would not require much in the way of maintenance. The point I am making is that all this stuff existed long before the big tech platforms. It can easily exist without them too. They are not actually providing anything of any worth that couldn't easily be found elsewhere (well, used to be found elsewhere!).

yunohn 5y ago
> They provide very little over and above that. For people who love BBForums (like HN tbh), everything may seem “like a forum”. But that is very reductive and uninspired. There are various features provided by Snapchat (camera, filters, games) and FB (marketplace, messenger) that nobody would ever compare to a BBForum/Wikipedia. They are inherently complex and valuable to the majority of their users.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > There are various features provided by Snapchat (camera, filters, games) and FB (marketplace, messenger) that nobody would ever compare to a BBForum/Wikipedia. Yeah. That's because all those features used to be separate applications, not tied to BBForum/Wikipedia engine. They're all complex, but they're also orthogonal to the platform, and their implementations are pretty much commodities. The only value provided here is by integration with platform (particularly UX-wise). Which seems fine, except the only reason this is valuable in the first place, is because the platforms prevent everyone else from doing such integrations themselves.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> What is missing from your rant is, why would any platform exist then? Nobody is building them without expecting to profit off the mutual relationship. Plenty of smaller platforms exist for reasons other than profit (e.g. altruism, or desire for feeling important). But for-profit platforms are fine too! Mutually beneficial relationships are a good thing. But we're talking about Facebook, et al. here - advertising-based platforms. They way they're making profit off the relationship is not through mutually beneficial exchange of value. The platforms instead are abusing their position of power in the relationship to pull the users in, keep them glued, and expose to maximum amount of advertising. This is not a case "here's an ad box because we have some server costs to cover, you know". These platforms are thoroughly optimized to maximize ad revenue. Every feature they just "can't seem to get right", every weird UX blunder, every feature that's obvious but missing for unexplained reasons[0] - all that are not mistakes, but decisions to give you a shitty product in order to make you more exploitable[1]. Or, in short: as a user, your actual relationship with big social media platforms is the same as between a cow and a farm. Cows are there to be milked, and make more cows for milking. They're not the ones who get to say how the farm is run. > I never understand the POV that everything should somehow magically be provided for free. Right? They have costs, after all. But you're looking at the wrong people. This expectations wasn't created by regular people - it was created by companies who figured they can do the ultimate undercut of their competition by offering their product for free, and make money through a side channel. Since most people are extremely price sensitive, nobody can compete on price with $0 - so the model stuck, and it's because of this that people expect everything on the Internet to be free. > But every platform you listed is significantly more complex than that. That's mostly because they have more money than they know what to do with, and are competing against other platforms with similar amount of spending cash. Most of that complexity goes to supporting the advertising aspects of the platform and the dark patterns that keep the users in their pens. I mean, modern factory farms are significantly more complex than the stereotypical family farm of centuries past - but as a cow, you probably don't want to experience that complexity. -- [0] - E.g. sorting your feed by date, or searching posts by date, or a "dislike" button, or ... [1] - One interesting facet of attention economy is that it seeks to make every task as inefficient as possible - because money is being made on friction. The longer it takes you to do a thing, the longer you can be exposed to advertising. The more frustrated you are, the more susceptible you are to that advertising.

breakfastduck 5y ago

People are not expecting everything to be free at all. But they're making the point that if you are advertising something as 'free' when you're actually paying through the nose by having every piece of personal data extracted and sold to the highest bidder, it should not be advertised as 'free'. Becuase it isn't. Make it free, or make it paid, or if you really must use the data harvesting model then at the very least make it very clear that it is not free because you are paying via a different means.

ryan93 5y ago
How are you paying through the nose? i never click on ads so every ad service ive used for the last twenty years really has been free.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Did you just stop reading the comment at that phrase? You are paying through the data collected, regardless of whether you engage with the adverts or not.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    What are you paying though. Can anyone explain the consequences to me?
wintermutestwin 5y ago
Indeed. They are giving trinkets to the natives for their land. Maybe we need to educate the natives on how valuable their land actually is.

criddell 5y ago

> why would any platform exist then? If your users are unwilling to pay for the service, then perhaps the value it provides is zero and it shouldn't exist.

jppittma 5y ago

What's missing from his rant is the inclusion of wikipedia, showing that platforms can exist without an expectation of profit. What's more, I'm not entirely convinced, we as a society would be worse off without most of the above.