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Town 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 th

Town 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 ago
This 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 ago
  My 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 ago
    I 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?
    - haswell 3y ago
      > But why are platforms necessary for that to happen? A "gathering place" is not the de facto state of the Internet. Whether it's a "platform", or some as-of-yet undefined structure, the ability to have conversations with a group of folks potentially interested in what I have to say or want to sell depends on there being some gathering mechanism. My point was that if you remove all major social networks tomorrow, what is left behind is not such an environment [0], and the fact that I can spin up a domain is not a replacement for the utility provided by such networks. This is not a claim that such networks are only good, or that I like them, and whether or not it's possible to build such a place without just recreating the issues that plague the current platforms is a different question entirely. But the utility is pretty obviously there. The toxicity and misinformation is the obvious problem, but this doesn't imply that there aren't a host of positive outcomes as well. If we could hypothetically remove them all tomorrow, there are a myriad of use cases that aren't strictly arguing with each other about contentious topics that have no place to go. Municipalities share updates with their communities, National Parks with their visitors, city transit services with their ridership, etc. In years past, this kind of communication would have happened in other ways - physical bulletin boards, printed newspapers, talking to John at the general store, but have all been supplanted by various social media accounts. Going back to a "pre-social" Internet overnight does not account for these externalities. I tend to think a pre-social Internet would actually be a better place, but to get there requires new thinking about solving the problems that are currently only handled by social media. > but why does it follow that anyone is entitled to access them? I never claimed that it does. - [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

jakelazaroff 3y ago

This 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 ago
My 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 ago
  I 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?
  - haswell 3y ago
    > But why are platforms necessary for that to happen? A "gathering place" is not the de facto state of the Internet. Whether it's a "platform", or some as-of-yet undefined structure, the ability to have conversations with a group of folks potentially interested in what I have to say or want to sell depends on there being some gathering mechanism. My point was that if you remove all major social networks tomorrow, what is left behind is not such an environment [0], and the fact that I can spin up a domain is not a replacement for the utility provided by such networks. This is not a claim that such networks are only good, or that I like them, and whether or not it's possible to build such a place without just recreating the issues that plague the current platforms is a different question entirely. But the utility is pretty obviously there. The toxicity and misinformation is the obvious problem, but this doesn't imply that there aren't a host of positive outcomes as well. If we could hypothetically remove them all tomorrow, there are a myriad of use cases that aren't strictly arguing with each other about contentious topics that have no place to go. Municipalities share updates with their communities, National Parks with their visitors, city transit services with their ridership, etc. In years past, this kind of communication would have happened in other ways - physical bulletin boards, printed newspapers, talking to John at the general store, but have all been supplanted by various social media accounts. Going back to a "pre-social" Internet overnight does not account for these externalities. I tend to think a pre-social Internet would actually be a better place, but to get there requires new thinking about solving the problems that are currently only handled by social media. > but why does it follow that anyone is entitled to access them? I never claimed that it does. - [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect