Media corporations are slowly realizing that leverage has shifted.

You don’t need to give free content to Bezos, Sulzberger, or Murdoch employees to get the word out anymore.

Just build your own audience, and go direct if you have something to say. cjr.org/public_editor/…
You no longer need to pay a toll to a media middleman to reach an audience. You don’t need them at all.

“The internet...destroyed one of the media’s most important sources of power: being the only place that could offer access to an audience.” cjr.org/public_editor/…
The new vanity metric is vanity media. You simply do not need legacy media coverage to reach an audience. It’s junk traffic.
Build your own media arm. Don’t respond to employees of legacy media corps. Whatever you have to say, say it in your own words. Better yet, say it in your own film.

Just don’t consent to giving them free content. Bezos, Sulzberger, and Murdoch already have enough money.
Remember: the New York Times Company announced it is becoming a tech company.

That means it has gotten in the ring.
This is not some public trust, it’s a $7B firm aiming for $70B.

Coke doesn’t help Pepsi. Google doesn’t aid FB. Why should you give free content to a competitor?

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More from @balajis

24 Oct
The future is Communist Capital vs Woke Capital vs Crypto Capital.
Each represents a left/right fusion that’s bizarre by the standards of the 1980s consensus.

It’s PRC vs MMT vs BTC.
Communist Capital is the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s capitalism checked by the centralized power of the Chinese state, as pithily summarized here. quillette.com/2020/10/10/is-… Image
Read 5 tweets
23 Oct
Absolutely agree that workers should share in the upside of these platforms.

But a state that fails at basic functions like police, fire, public health, education, sanitation isn’t capable of competent regulation. That’s why AB5 was a disaster.

There is a better way, though...
I’m very sympathetic to @ljin18 and @dumplicious’s points about making sure workers share upside.

Had Uber been able to give equity to all 1M drivers, perhaps they’d be a $100B company with $50B owned by drivers at ~$50k/driver.

A happier and economically aligned workforce.
So what eventually happens is that all these platforms get turned into crypto protocols.

Every rider and driver now share in the upside. And due to encryption, voluntary transactions between two parties can no longer be surveilled and interdicted by the state.
Read 4 tweets
11 Oct
The three most complex pieces of software are operating systems, web browsers, and blockchains.
These reflect the on-disk, online, and on-chain eras respectively. From desktop to internet to crypto.
A web browser is after all essentially an OS. It has an interpreter, you write apps for it, and so on. ChromeOS took this to its natural conclusion.

A blockchain is also an OS. It has a compiler, you write apps for it, and so on. What will take this to its natural conclusion?
Read 6 tweets
11 Oct
A fundamental issue is that viral content tends to be provocative. In theory it's possible to change the incentive structure, as shown by these two graphs.
facebook.com/notes/mark-zuc…
Right now, the "policy line" is determined by community reaction or manual platform review. So there are humans in the loop.

However, if FB or Twitter's databases were open source, anyone could try ML to try predicting virality & sentiment for a post. Probably some signal there.
Of course, the problem with ML-based pre-publication content review by FB/Twitter is that these are for-profit American companies put in the role of soft censoring millions.

I think many people there have good intent, but as folks have noted the potential for abuse is obvious.
Read 6 tweets
6 Oct
Every company is now a media company. Go direct if you have something to say. electrek.co/2020/10/06/tes…
The whole concept of giving free content, quotes, interviews to legacy media corporations is obsolete.

It’s a habit. A bad habit. Break it. And if you have news to break, break it on your own channels: your Twitter, YouTube, podcast, or blog.

Don’t have a channel? Build one.
As every company becomes a media company, every citizen becomes a citizen journalist.

Want a quote from @elonmusk? Check his feed like everyone else. Everyone gets access to the same info at the same time.
Read 7 tweets
28 Sep
Crypto is what comes after Silicon Valley.
Some of the reasons why:

1) It has much more philosophical depth than tech. Can’t understand BTC without history

2) It has an international, remote-first, shared culture built around common memes

3) It is technologically harder than most web apps, which has a selective effect
4) It is an alternative to many legacy institutions

Wall Street → decentralized finance
Silicon Valley → decentralized protocols
Yale Law → smart contracts
Columbia Journalism → crypto oracles
Federal Reserve → algorithmic monetary policy
Harvard KSG → on-chain governance
Read 8 tweets

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