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I mean all of these issues basically boil down to that these services and platforms that now constitute whatever can vaguely pass as if you squint your eyes eno

I mean all of these issues basically boil down to that these services and platforms that now constitute whatever can vaguely pass as if you squint your eyes enough a third place, though if you analogize it to a park, it's a park where like 6 marketing people follow you around and make note every time you stop to look at a flower, but that's a different conversation. People are entitled to express themselves in any way that's not illegal per the first amendment, but because all these companies are entirely, 100% beholden to advertisers to continue to exist, that expression is necessarily limited to suit the tastes of those advertisers. Perfect example is Twitter. They've adopted much looser restrictions on content and as a result, the company is worth about a fifth what it was when it was purchased by Musk, and the ads in that time have shifted significantly from prominent, respected brands and being... ubiquitous, but not to an extent that it felt so, to being virtually every third or fourth post, and completely unknown companies hawking all manner of unimpressive goods, crypto schemes, dude wipes, and of course weight loss drugs and dick pills. Basically the exact kinds of ads you'd expect to find on crank conspiracy websites circa 2010 (and probably today) and a shitload MORE of them, because they're trying desperately to keep the company financially solvent. The government intervention would probably be something like these various networks (or a new one) that is owned and operated by the public, like a utility.

soulofmischief 2y ago
It's an interesting problem because we do see innovation from private companies (tech, scaling, UX, etc) that I don't think we'd see in a publicly/government-owned platform. But the fact that it comes at the cost of hiring the world's top minds to figure out how to generate more ad clicks at any cost (mind control, teen suicide, etc.) is just unacceptable. Whatever way out we might choose, I hope that it doesn't impact indie hackers and people who want to try new things. We have to make sure that the root of the problem, advertising, is properly captured in the letter of the law, and that any legislation doesn't get disemboweled by corporate interests on the way out the door.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > It's an interesting problem because we do see innovation from private companies (tech, scaling, UX, etc) that I don't think we'd see in a publicly/government-owned platform. I mean, would you need half of that scaling if not for the demands of surveillance capitalism? How much of Google's tech stack is built around, for example, delivering email, and how much of Google's tech stack is built around harvesting user data for Adsense? I'm sure gmail runs on something that would be as far from a standard email server as anything I could imagine, but I feel like there's a natural ceiling in terms of the sheer amount of compute you could reasonably bring to bear to accomplish the task of mail transfer, whereas I could easily see the demands of running intensive, page-by-page analytics on a variety of websites and apps all at the same time easily demanding an absolutely stressful amount of server traffic and compute, let alone the delivery of the ads after that work is finished. And, that also presumes that gmail as a service is made better by being run on the infrastructure of a hyper-scaler. Running it across datacenters worldwide. Is it? Is the experience meaningfully better for the end user in the bargain, or is it everything around that service that requires such vast resources? Like, genuinely, how much electricity could we save if we just turned off user data collection tomorrow?
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > It's an interesting problem because we do see innovation from private companies (tech, scaling, UX, etc) that I don't think we'd see in a publicly/government-owned platform. I don't see any reason to suspect this. Even a blurrier incentive is still incentive. Secondly a lot of that innovation has been bad. Consider the disappearance of a chronological timeline, or ads themselves. There's nothing inherently positive about the concept of innovation but profit motivates every type (as it stands). It just tends to happen faster with private enterprise and without any say from the users.
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    You're right, I just mean more on the UX and tech side of things. Government software UX is typically atrocious. Some of it is well-founded and just outdated, though. But, there are some nice efforts taking place within the government to modernize and standardize tech and UX. digital. Digital.gov is killing it lately. https://designsystem.digital.gov/ https://designsystem.digital.gov/

soulofmischief 2y ago

It's an interesting problem because we do see innovation from private companies (tech, scaling, UX, etc) that I don't think we'd see in a publicly/government-owned platform. But the fact that it comes at the cost of hiring the world's top minds to figure out how to generate more ad clicks at any cost (mind control, teen suicide, etc.) is just unacceptable. Whatever way out we might choose, I hope that it doesn't impact indie hackers and people who want to try new things. We have to make sure that the root of the problem, advertising, is properly captured in the letter of the law, and that any legislation doesn't get disemboweled by corporate interests on the way out the door.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> It's an interesting problem because we do see innovation from private companies (tech, scaling, UX, etc) that I don't think we'd see in a publicly/government-owned platform. I mean, would you need half of that scaling if not for the demands of surveillance capitalism? How much of Google's tech stack is built around, for example, delivering email, and how much of Google's tech stack is built around harvesting user data for Adsense? I'm sure gmail runs on something that would be as far from a standard email server as anything I could imagine, but I feel like there's a natural ceiling in terms of the sheer amount of compute you could reasonably bring to bear to accomplish the task of mail transfer, whereas I could easily see the demands of running intensive, page-by-page analytics on a variety of websites and apps all at the same time easily demanding an absolutely stressful amount of server traffic and compute, let alone the delivery of the ads after that work is finished. And, that also presumes that gmail as a service is made better by being run on the infrastructure of a hyper-scaler. Running it across datacenters worldwide. Is it? Is the experience meaningfully better for the end user in the bargain, or is it everything around that service that requires such vast resources? Like, genuinely, how much electricity could we save if we just turned off user data collection tomorrow?
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> It's an interesting problem because we do see innovation from private companies (tech, scaling, UX, etc) that I don't think we'd see in a publicly/government-owned platform. I don't see any reason to suspect this. Even a blurrier incentive is still incentive. Secondly a lot of that innovation has been bad. Consider the disappearance of a chronological timeline, or ads themselves. There's nothing inherently positive about the concept of innovation but profit motivates every type (as it stands). It just tends to happen faster with private enterprise and without any say from the users.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  You're right, I just mean more on the UX and tech side of things. Government software UX is typically atrocious. Some of it is well-founded and just outdated, though. But, there are some nice efforts taking place within the government to modernize and standardize tech and UX. digital. Digital.gov is killing it lately. https://designsystem.digital.gov/ https://designsystem.digital.gov/