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This! A thousand times this! Even if every single social network vanished tomorrow, we would still have a space where anyone can say whatever they want and inst
by jakelazaroff 3y ago
This! A thousand times this! Even if every single social network vanished tomorrow, we would still have a space where anyone can say whatever they want and instantly distribute it to every corner of the Earth.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoThat's not a town square though. That's someone shouting out their window.
- jakelazaroff 3y agoAt the risk of stretching this analogy even further past its breaking point, what do you think a “town square” is?
- JKCalhoun 3y agoA common area where people gather to shout/listen.
- jakelazaroff 3y agoThe Internet (or really the Web) is a common area. You tweet something, I write a blog post and embed your tweet in it, Alice emails my post to her friends, Bob writes a post in response and links back to me, Charlie submits Bob’s post to Hacker News or Reddit, David and Eve discuss in the comments, etc.
- the-printer 3y agoWindows do not have URLs.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- haswell 3y agoTown squares emerge where people gather. In the physical world, this happens out of necessity, and due to the incentives of our economic system. But I don’t think the internet version of this analogy holds up if you were to just erase social networks tomorrow. Depending on one’s goals, starting your own site on some corner of the internet is akin to opening a store in the middle of nowhere. I can do it, but no one is coming here unless I find the place that people gather and tell them about my new shop in mountains. The fabric of internet does enable this, but if I want to build a store, I’m going to do it somewhere where people gather, or I’m still going to rely on the places that people already gather to spread the word. If I’m ambitious, what I really need to do is build a new town so that a square can emerge. But now I’m Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Analogies between the Internet itself and the town square have always been shaky, and the deeper one goes, the more stark the differences. I’d argue that the internet is closer to the world stage — a place in which anything can happen, but more like the raw environment in which town squares emerge than a town square itself.
- jakelazaroff 3y agoThis all seems fine to me, though? If you want to open a store in the mall, you need to obey the mall rules. If you don’t want to obey the mall rules, you need to open your store somewhere else.
- haswell 3y agoMy point is unrelated to the rules of operating on a particular platform, but about the broader claim that platforms aren’t needed at all, because anyone can start their own site if they want to. A mall is unnecessary to open a store in an existing town, and may even be undesirable depending on the nature of my business. And many towns (thankfully) don’t have malls. The point was that opening a store is very much reliant on people living nearby, and that the analogy “the Internet is the town square” is not a very good one.
- jakelazaroff 3y agoI mean, I think the “town square” analogy is bad in general, so let’s dispense of it. I don’t understand your point though. The Internet is a communication medium, so of course the goal is for other people to interact with your site. But why are platforms necessary for that to happen? People like them, which is fine, but why does it follow that anyone is entitled to access them?
- Freedom2 3y agoWhat if some corners don't have internet?
- jakelazaroff 3y agoI don’t think those corners are worried about censorship on social media.