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The ads aren't the problem of social networks. They are the problem of the Web. Usenets were the first social networks, but their monetization scheme didn't a
by crabbone 4y ago
The ads aren't the problem of social networks. They are the problem of the Web.
Usenets were the first social networks, but their monetization scheme didn't allow for mega international companies to exist: they were paid for to ISPs and ISPs only pay other ISPs for traffic, they don't pay for individual services.
Email used to be the same way... sigh.
Web became the platform that enabled for advertisement to be mixed into the product. I cannot tell if Hotmail or similar saw the promise of ads on the Web, or did they "accidentally" succeed -- whichever the case, it's the Web that took over other Internet applications because it made it possible to monetize it in a different and a more scalable way.
Ideally, we'd have an Internet application for social networks, instead of it being a Web application. So that we pay our ISP for usage. We just really don't have that kind of application (yet?) And, I'm not sure ISPs are thrilled about this (will the effort be worth the revenues?). Definitely, companies like Meta aren't interested in that, as that would undermine their core business.
But then, who knows... ad spam seems to be able to find its way no matter the technology. You can think about SMS as being similar to an Internet application, and you do get spam ads over SMS too.
Another problem of social network as Internet application would be the search. Search works better when it's governed by a single entity which cares about indexing the data in various ways. If it's distributed, that'd be very challenging to implement, especially because it wouldn't be clear who's responsible for storing the indices and who pays whom in the end.
Another challenge would be the connection between user's identity and their ISP... well, there are a lot of things that would need work, but I don't think it's not possible overall. In legislative terms, we'd need to recognize social networks as a service similar to postal service, and regulate it accordingly...
- rchaud 4y agoThis ignores the algorithmic ordering of social media feeds, which was unique to Facebook and then widely copied by all the other ad-ridden socials. There was no "connecting people" reason for them to do it, it was done because it made it easier to throw ads in to readers' feeds and make sure they'd be noticed.
- charcircuit 4y ago>There was no "connecting people" reason for them to do it Not all posts are equally important. If someone only has time to read 5 posts then they should see important life updates from their friends and what they are interested in and not just show you 5 posts from them same person about how much they enjoyed their dinner and how good it looked.
- rchaud 4y agoAbsolutely nothing about FB is optimized for the "I only have 5 minutes" user. The whole point is to be constantly scrolling because FB intentionally doesn't tell you what you may have missed.
- charcircuit 4y agoI disagree and would say that it optimizes for both. I have no issue in seeing the most important pests at the top of my feed. Of course I can keep scrolling and find interesting posts, but were those posts actually important for me to see? Not really.
- crabbone 4y agoThere's nothing exclusive about social media in this regard. Any Web application that could do that, tried to do that. Web search engines? -- didn't they try to tailor search results to your profile (or paid advertisement)? Retailers? -- didn't they try to suggest related goods based on your profile (or paid advertisement)? Everyone on the Web who used ads wanted to know your profile and wanted to manipulate the contents they provided to you based on it (and the wishes of those who pay for the ads). Again, the problem is not the social media. The problem is the Web.