Thread by @digiphile

We have to change the incentive structure of social media, says @glichfield at #FWD50:
Think about a different way to give value that's less about short-term gratification.
The "time well spent" movement is one idea.
How you get people to value that?
Maybe by them paying for it.

@glichfield Laws like GDPR end up leaving us flooded us with pop-ups that don't leave us better informed, says @glichfield. (Like a EULA & ToS)
He says we need to move away from ownership & control frame to protecting people from harms when data is misused & redress from those abuses
#FWD50

The explosion of the Internet meant that the scarce thing was no longer content, but attention, says @glichfield. The platforms that emerged were the ones that monetized attention, because that was scarce.
#FWD50.

(Ergo, I value the slices of attention you give me a great deal.)

@glichfield Riffing on science fiction (@DavidBrin?), @acroll says the job is not to predict cars, but traffic jams.
@glichfield says use the tools of social science to make predictions about what people will do with emerging tech (citing @zeynep) rather than expect rational behavior.
#FWD50

Like @glichfield, I expected nations would adopt tech to enable normal life – contact tracing, testing, quarantines.

I also overestimated capacity of governments to implement tech (404 "vaccination passports") & how much people would value freedom of movement over safety.
#FWD50

Each disruption to a key service – Internet, Facebook, electricity – teaches us about the need for more resilience, says @glichfield, in answer to @acroll's question about the "civilization stack.

As with losing water, air, or power, online outrages show us what we need.
#FWD50

Maybe we're headed for a long-term breakdown of the "truth class," muses @glichfield, in response to @acroll: perhaps we'll create other ways to create reliable knowledge about the world or models of governance that enable us to form consensus.
-> pol.is
#FWD50

What @glichfield acknowledged is important: many people in the "truth class" *have* been dismissive or hostile to emerging tech – the Internet, Web, social media, & apps – and some still are.

Key gatekeepers endure, but info now gets routed around them.

huffpost.com/entry/is-journ…