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I thought like this once. Futurists have a tendency to imagine a world of changed human behavior and it's compelling to do so. The reality is that the future r

I thought like this once. Futurists have a tendency to imagine a world of changed human behavior and it's compelling to do so. The reality is that the future rarely arrives as sweeping change, but rather as metaphor and specialization. Whereas you can imagine others adopting new patterns of behavior because you understand the underlying reasons why such behavior is reasonable, the metaphor through which you explain this change is not readily understood. Why, as a User do I want this? If the answer is control and privacy, you might be barking up the wrong tree (time and again we've shown that those are not things consumers want or are willing to pay for). If you want to drive dynamic change in the world, you have to change the underlying structure of complicated systems while steadfastly avoiding changes in user behavior. It turns out this is quite hard. I applaud your efforts but encourage you to avoid the rabbit hole of endless specialization and to improve the marketing metaphor/rhetoric.

walterbell 12y ago
Rhetoric from a16z in a thread of 50+ tweets: "Bitcoin, billions of phones, and NSA eavesdropping are among trends that may eventually result in cloud successor: data-local computing" https://twitter.com/balajis/status/487403585445978112 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/487403585445978112
quadrangle 12y ago
> time and again we've shown that those are not things consumers want or are willing to pay for CITATION please. I think we have never seen such things. We've not had studies that control for all other factors and then conclude that users don't want control and privacy. I think your claim is flat out wrong. You're taking the fact that most users won't sacrifice by using a lower-quality, obscure thing for privacy and control, and leaping to the baseless conclusion that nobody cares about these things. I think you're completely wrong.
- josh2600 12y ago
  There have not been any case studies that have empirically demonstrated this to be true. If that is your basis for evaluating my statements then I cannot support my claim in a manner that you would find satisfactory. I would however, anecdotally highlight the progression of social services from places of privacy to places of publicity. One could argue that sites like "The Well" were the original social networks but they did not grow (whether by choice is of course a matter for debate). Over time, each successive social startup defaulted to a more open stance and scaled an order of magnitude in users with each step. The trend suggests that all things being equal, users will say they want privacy but want the features publishing and syndication provides (voting purely with their registrations and advertising value). I agree that privacy has value, but I would argue that the anecdotal evidence suggests that users want less private services (and yes I'm aware that correlation is not causation, but I think this observation is apt). This is not law or dogma but rather a thought and I'm sorry if it was communicated poorly previously.
  - gurkendoktor 12y ago
    > the progression of social services from places of privacy to places of publicity I don't think that's a clear-cut anecdote. Facebook does actually feel very private, because it's isolated from Google and outside users. Look at the number of female profiles where everything but the name is hidden from non-friends. I don't remember MySpace or blog users ever being this paranoid. And then, anecdotally, many people around me have started to live in WhatsApp/LINE gossip groups, which is something that could easily be decentralised.
- elliottpayne 12y ago
  I would look towards the trajectory of Path, and the fate of app.net for your evidence of the preferences of end users vis-a-vis paying a premium for privacy and security relative to free alternatives that make no such claims (Facebook and Twitter, respectively).
  - amirmc 12y ago
    Please don't assume that a lock-in based on network effects must mean users are happy with (or even aware of) that trade. I don't like FB's practices, or the way LinkedIn deals with me, yet I maintain profiles on both sites. Twitter was unambiguously non-private from the start so there were no broken expectations.

walterbell 12y ago

Rhetoric from a16z in a thread of 50+ tweets: "Bitcoin, billions of phones, and NSA eavesdropping are among trends that may eventually result in cloud successor: data-local computing" https://twitter.com/balajis/status/487403585445978112 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/487403585445978112

quadrangle 12y ago

> time and again we've shown that those are not things consumers want or are willing to pay for CITATION please. I think we have never seen such things. We've not had studies that control for all other factors and then conclude that users don't want control and privacy. I think your claim is flat out wrong. You're taking the fact that most users won't sacrifice by using a lower-quality, obscure thing for privacy and control, and leaping to the baseless conclusion that nobody cares about these things. I think you're completely wrong.

josh2600 12y ago
There have not been any case studies that have empirically demonstrated this to be true. If that is your basis for evaluating my statements then I cannot support my claim in a manner that you would find satisfactory. I would however, anecdotally highlight the progression of social services from places of privacy to places of publicity. One could argue that sites like "The Well" were the original social networks but they did not grow (whether by choice is of course a matter for debate). Over time, each successive social startup defaulted to a more open stance and scaled an order of magnitude in users with each step. The trend suggests that all things being equal, users will say they want privacy but want the features publishing and syndication provides (voting purely with their registrations and advertising value). I agree that privacy has value, but I would argue that the anecdotal evidence suggests that users want less private services (and yes I'm aware that correlation is not causation, but I think this observation is apt). This is not law or dogma but rather a thought and I'm sorry if it was communicated poorly previously.
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  > the progression of social services from places of privacy to places of publicity I don't think that's a clear-cut anecdote. Facebook does actually feel very private, because it's isolated from Google and outside users. Look at the number of female profiles where everything but the name is hidden from non-friends. I don't remember MySpace or blog users ever being this paranoid. And then, anecdotally, many people around me have started to live in WhatsApp/LINE gossip groups, which is something that could easily be decentralised.
elliottpayne 12y ago
I would look towards the trajectory of Path, and the fate of app.net for your evidence of the preferences of end users vis-a-vis paying a premium for privacy and security relative to free alternatives that make no such claims (Facebook and Twitter, respectively).
- amirmc 12y ago
  Please don't assume that a lock-in based on network effects must mean users are happy with (or even aware of) that trade. I don't like FB's practices, or the way LinkedIn deals with me, yet I maintain profiles on both sites. Twitter was unambiguously non-private from the start so there were no broken expectations.