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THREAD: Are tech’s social giants too big to fail?
If there is a challenge, will it be based on better incentive alignment, an answer to deplatforming, or something else?
Let’s check the status on one of the most previously discussed crypto ideas: disrupting web giants 👇
If there is a challenge, will it be based on better incentive alignment, an answer to deplatforming, or something else?
Let’s check the status on one of the most previously discussed crypto ideas: disrupting web giants 👇
2/ In his 2019 prediction thread, @mikekarnj argued that, while previous generations felt social networks were impossible to take on because of the power of network effects, new entrepreneurs would leverage things like data privacy to go after them
3/ The notion of crypto-powered platforms providing counterweights to the tech giants has been at the heart of what @eriktorenberg called tech crypto. @cdixon wrote probably the best articulation in his seminal “Why Decentralization Matters” medium.com/s/story/why-de…
4/ In short, @cdixon argued that while, at the beginning of a network, the interests of users and owners aligns, inevitably pure growth dwindles and owners have to extract more from users they already have. @kjer called this the “extraction imperative” medium.com/public-market/…
5/ If, theoretically, crypto-powered networks create the possibility of disruption, an obvious question becomes which factors make networks most susceptible? medium.com/public-market/…
6/ Right now, a number of experimental upstarts give us the chance to look at different approaches to social network disruption live and as they happen. The first has to do with incentives.
7/ One of the most important meta shifts in the last couple years has been the seismic loss of trust in how major platforms handle consumer data. This shift came to a head in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, GDPR and more
nbcnews.com/business/consu…
nbcnews.com/business/consu…
8/ This shift is so rampant that the new normal response to assume that any experience in our digital lives that creates data may be used for nefarious purposes - such as the Facebook 10 year meme - or facial recognition training program?
9/ One answer that has been bandied about - most recently by @iamwill in @TheEconomist - is some combination of giving people better control over their data or actually paying them for it. economist.com/open-future/20…
10/ In other words, could you design the economics of a content-driven network to focus on compensating and rewarding content creators rather than empowering advertisers to leverage data for targeting?
11/ This notion has been a live experiment in crypto for some time, exemplified by SteemIt. Unfortunately, the project has to make the obvious pun, lost some Steem, laying of 70% of its team and now looking to advertising models. techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/ste…
12/ Another social app experimenting with creator payments that finds itself on the rise, however, is @cent, which not only allows creators to be compensated but cuts in supporters to reward their amplification.
13/ Interestingly, the message coming from @cent supporters hasn’t just been about the economic benefits, but about hedging against the risk of censorship from sites like Medium and Twitter.
14/ Which brings us to the 2nd force driving the rise of social network alternatives: censorship and the specter of deplatforming. Deplatforming - in other words being forcefully removed - has become enough of a thing that, for some, it’s jumped the shark
15/ “Deplatforming” has become a part of the culturo-tech convo alongside the widening gyre (as @EpsilonTheory would put it) of American politics, as platforms like Twitter and Facebook ban figures like Alex Jones, creating a new context for outrage. epsilontheory.com/things-fall-ap…
16/ On the one hand, the argument is that these are centralized platforms with terms of service and, more importantly, the ability to do pretty well whatever they please. Play by their rules or get booted.
17/ On the other hand, even if we take some amount of the deplatforming hoopla as political showmanship, there is a legitimate conversation to be had about the gatekeeper access our tech platforms have to the broader public discourse.
18/ Put differently: we wanted the internet to destroy the gatekeepers, but instead we got the most powerful gatekeepers in the history of the world.
19/ There are numerous responses to the trend in (or hedge against a possible future rise in, depending on your perspective) platform level censorship and deplatforming.
20/ Some of them are just turning away from centralized platforms like Medium towards long established open alternatives like Wordpress
21/ Others are new services, such as @MastodonProject, which functions as a sort of federated micro-messaging Twitter alternative.
22/ Patreon has been at the center of deplatforming politics recently, with the high-profile exits in the last few months of @jordanbpeterson @rubinreport and @SamHarrisOrg, who wrote this final note to his followers
23/ The crypto community has taken note of the Patreon defections as it seems like a clear place for an uncensorable, crypto driven alternative. Indeed, Pederson quickly starting accepting BTC donations and is theoretically working on an alternative cointelegraph.com/news/controver…
24/ Maybe the most vocal / media present anti-censorship social network alternative is @GetOnGab. They’ve increasingly connected the dots between their free speech stance and Bitcoin. @PeterMcCormack pod forthcoming
25/ As an aside to the larger question of social network disruption, deplatforming, etc, @GetOnGab’s description of Bitcoin as “free speech money” is an incredibly powerful fast meme for understanding Bitcoin.
@getongab 26/ One of the most interesting things to me about the rest of truly free speech platforms is the inevitable tension between the ideal of free speech and what speech any of us find palatable. I.e. protecting speech can make for some uneasy bedfellows
27/ The point though is this: @mikekarnj’s prediction that 2019 will see a new class of entrepreneurs challenge the assumed dominance of the social networks seems to me to be off with a bang.
28/ Whether it is the fight for censorship resistance and against deplatforming, the opportunity to align incentives in new ways, or something else entirely that drives the charge for network alternatives remains to be seen.
29/ It’s also important to note how fundamentally difficult it is to try to overcome network effects at the size and scale of today’s platforms. So much of the value is in *all* of the attention being concentrated in a single place.
30/ What’s more - big loud consumer outcries - be they around data or deplatforming - have never truly made a dent in user bases. This was the case with FB after CA and Patreon also doesn’t seem to have been hurt yet.
31/ Finally, it seems possible to likely that to challenge an existing network will require a transformed user experience that simply becomes more valuable than what’s offered - group messaging, voice, ??? - from a company that embeds anti-censorship or new incentives as well.
32/ In other words, most people won’t shift behavior on principle - they’ll shift because everyone else is shifting, and everyone else is shifting because it’s more fun, usable, and offers something undeniably different.
33/ Still, it’s exciting to see projects taking a not-messing-around stab at different incentive-aligned and censorship resistance approaches to social networks, and will be fascinating to watch how crypto empowers them.
APPENDIX: Maybe I'll start using this to post relevant threads around related topics. Starting with...
Appendix 2. More related thoughts on the degree to which critique of existing social networks is about control over the power (not the power itself)
Appendix 3: thread on FB integrating the infrastructure for Messenger WhatsApp and Instagram. Which could be considered another reason to route for the alternative experiments
