What If Social Media Were Not for Profit? (newint.org) 152
"What would it look like if we called time on Big Tech's failed experiment?" asks the co-editor of the Oxford-based magazine New Internationalist:
A better social media would need to be decentralized... As well as avoiding a single point of failure (or censorship), this would help with other goals: community ownership, and democratic control, would be facilitated by having many smaller, perhaps more local, sites. Existing social media giants must be brought into public (and transnational) ownership — in a way that hands power to citizens, not governments. But they should also be broken up, using existing anti-monopoly rules.
It is hard to know what sort of algorithms would best promote real community until we try... But the algorithms that determine what enters peoples' social feeds must be transparent: open source, open for scrutiny, and for change. We could also adapt from sites like Wikipedia (collectively edited) and Reddit (where posts and comments' visibility is determined by user votes). Moderation policies — what content is and isn't allowed — could be decided collectively, according to groups' needs....
An important step towards a decentralized social network would be interoperability, and data portability. Different sites need to be able to talk to each other (or 'federate'), just as email providers or mobile operators are required to. There's no point being on a site if your friends aren't, but if your server can relay messages to theirs there is less of a barrier. Meanwhile encryption will be vital for privacy.
One particularly intriguing idea is that of artist and software developer Darius Kazemi, who suggests every public library — there are 2.7 million worldwide — could host its own federated social media server. As well as providing local accountability and access, and boosting increasingly defunded neighbourhood assets, these servers would benefit from librarians' expertise in curating information.
It is hard to know what sort of algorithms would best promote real community until we try... But the algorithms that determine what enters peoples' social feeds must be transparent: open source, open for scrutiny, and for change. We could also adapt from sites like Wikipedia (collectively edited) and Reddit (where posts and comments' visibility is determined by user votes). Moderation policies — what content is and isn't allowed — could be decided collectively, according to groups' needs....
An important step towards a decentralized social network would be interoperability, and data portability. Different sites need to be able to talk to each other (or 'federate'), just as email providers or mobile operators are required to. There's no point being on a site if your friends aren't, but if your server can relay messages to theirs there is less of a barrier. Meanwhile encryption will be vital for privacy.
One particularly intriguing idea is that of artist and software developer Darius Kazemi, who suggests every public library — there are 2.7 million worldwide — could host its own federated social media server. As well as providing local accountability and access, and boosting increasingly defunded neighbourhood assets, these servers would benefit from librarians' expertise in curating information.
Pipe dream.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there's going to be "no censorship"...but it's going to be "democratic", with content "algorithms".
You're off to a great start with that plan...
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....artist and software developer Darius Kazemi, who suggests every public library could host its own federated social media server.
Here in the U.S. the state of Missouri, controlled by completely insane nutjobs, just voted to eliminate all funding for public libraries because they are butthurt over a lawsuit filed by the Missouri Library Association trying to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans certain books from schools.
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For a platform with millions of users, any system of democracy is going to become a government. And like real life governments, despite being not-for-profit, it will need to raise revenue somehow to pay civil servants and run the website.
I don't think anyone has found a way to organize democratic votes online that isn't wide open to abuse.
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If you don't design the protocol to allow for this or shape in in some way to invite centralization or capture by interested parties then it's a problem of bad design
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Let people run their own local instances that are part of the broader social network. Spread the costs out enough and it becomes negligible. Central bureaucracy doesn't need to exist if the responsibility can be given to regular citizens and they are allowed to self-manage or manage as part of a small local group they've collectively formed.
But is that a thing that "regular citizens" actually care about? At a high level what's being described here basically sounds like it boils down to having everyone run their own SMTP server (decentralized, open protocol, individual servers that can host some number of users locally but that can exchange "posts" with users on other servers with a minimal amount of friction). People could do that right now. But they don't because the hassle and expense of managing your own server isn't worth it to most pe
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That's a bit of a weird spin.
Mozilla is non-profit but I'm pretty sure they're not communists.
Besides, with the release of Twitter's algorithm, and events of the last few months, we know that kings of capitalism like Musk:
- Censor journalists that report on them
- Censor people who run flight trackers using public data
- De-rank important topics like the Ukraine war
- Gather metrics around Musk, Democrats, and Republicans, to allow them to ensure features always increase viewership of Musk, and potentially imp
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Maybe this level of constant contact, with people we will likely never meet, isn't really what people need.
That cuts directly to the heart of the matter and I like the sound of it.
OTOH, getting rid of the profit motive also gets rid of the psychological manipulation designed to "drive engagement" on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Under those circumstances, maybe the 'constant contact' wouldn't be the problem it is now, and social media might provide for meaningful connection and social change rather than knee-jerk responses and echo chambers.
If social media were no longer the psychological equivalent of an IV drip alte
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You put the censorship in the hands of the users. Don't want to read nazi content? Then don't visit sites that host nazi content.
Kind of funny you'd think avoiding content you don't want is that easy when you have a link to avoid spam (for emails).
Re:Pipe dream.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a little hard to have reasoned discussion with actual Nazis. Some of these people really do know what was Nazism and support their worst acts.
The problem arises from large groups of people being labeled Nazis even when they aren't actual Nazis.
Re: Pipe dream.. (Score:2)
I bet that many supporters of the original Nazi party, if taken out of context of history, would say things like "it's enough to deport the Jews" or
"all I want is a country clean of refugees".
What made these people into Nazis was that when the camps happened, they just said "oh well, not my problem".
How many of the people accused of Nazism today would also say that if camps reopened?
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Well without having a conversation with someone, how will you determine that their viewpoint is irrational and that they're incapable of reasoned discussion?
Invariably some will be like that, while others will simply be misguided. Some people are also just trolls, and don't believe what they're saying but know full well that taking an extreme viewpoint is a good way to antagonise.
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That's the point. Other than by going there, how would you know the content? People lie.
If you rely on going there and deciding, it's just keeping a blacklist.
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Well yes you can (and should) go there, read the content and judge for yourself. After having done so, you don't need to ever go back if you don't want to.
The key to everything is education and research... Understand a wide range of viewpoints, study the evidence and make up your own mind which ones you agree or disagree with.
Most of those who claim to be nazis (or are branded as nazis) today are not actually nazis at all, although some of them are no less abhorrent than real nazis. Calling someone a nazi h
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People should be exposed to multiple viewpoints...
There are far too many people who hate things without understanding what exactly they are, just having a kneejerk response of "X is bad" without understanding why.
It Would Be Called A BBS (Score:5, Funny)
And it would be in control. By nerds.
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Or any number of forums, and blogs without banner ads.
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Actually we did have a very extensive distributed social network that was internet native and not a BBS long before FB and the like.
Usenet. And it had most of the features, and a lot of the problems, we now associate with FB/Twitter/etc
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Re: It Would Be Called A BBS (Score:2)
The BBS.... (Score:3)
As a former sysop who ran a very successful multi-node BBS for over a decade? I have to agree.... The BBS era was a working example of not for profit social media, given the technology of the time.
Even back then, you had the commercial BBS's -- but the lion's share were run as free "labors of love" by hobbyists.
(BTW, curse you, Boardwatch Magazine, for being one of the most visible print media supporters of the BBS back then -- yet focusing almost solely on the big, commercial efforts. You missed 95% of w
Can't happen (Score:4, Insightful)
It's against their religion to leave a dollar on the table.
If there is a thing, that thing will soon have a price tag and a lawyer attached.
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Pretty sure things WILL change. Just not soon. Might take a whole generation before the Rebellion begins. Nevertheless, the poisons of 'for profit' entities infecting the wholesomeness of social media will meet its end. It might take a few other things with it like fake privacy or unabated data mining and trading.
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that thing will soon have a price tag and a lawyer attached.
Wikipedia and many open-source projects are obvious counter-examples to your claim.
Re:Can't happen (Score:5, Informative)
Mastodon exists .... so it has already happened, quite a few years ago ...
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Exactly. The technology for this has existed for a while. There's nothing stopping these types of organizations, local libraries, whatever, from starting their own social network sites, except the need to attract users by making their services something people actually want.
Now, if the proposal is actually to use the force of government to shut down any competing "non-community" social networks so that they don't have to compete for users, that's a terrible idea.
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The challenge is the broadcast tend to what most consider facts, which leaves certain parties feeling under represented. So there is a continuous battle to remove federal funding since facts does not represent 100% of the American public.
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How the turntables ... (Score:3)
Um ... Mastodon already exists... (Score:2)
Re: Um ... Mastodon already exists... (Score:4, Informative)
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yeah, nah (Score:3)
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Eventually the wrong person will get pissed off. And this particular person will have mega balls and create a new army that will destroy them.
At least that is what the movie script read.
There won't be an 'it' (Score:2)
There will be several different 'its', each with its own community and rules for participation and moderation, some large and popular, some small and niche.
Mass media and political parties will have their own well-publicised 'its', full of ads and engagement campaigns. But you'll also be able to have community 'its' for popular subjects, and private 'its' for friends and family.
So, not unlike Telegram or Discord channels. Except that it won't depend of for-profit companies or Russian oligarchs to keep going
Without proof of community (Score:5, Insightful)
It is hard to know what sort of algorithms would best promote real community until we try
Ah but that is the crux. Algorithms are only good with the data being brought in, but if the data being brought in is fabricated or outright false to be misleading, then it matters not what the algorithm can and cannot do. Garbage in, garbage out. In order for the algorithm to do what it says on the tin we have to have valid data and that means proof of who is using the social media.
And now we arrive at the crux. Identifying online is. . . problematic to say the least. Without verifying who is accessing, anyone with access can feed the algorithm. Now this wasn't an issue back in the days when access was limited. When only researchers were on the Internet, it's easy to trust what's being posted. But now, now we live in a world where everyone can access the Internet. There is no limiting access, so now, anything posted into a "community" can be anyone. And the good boy algorithm will eat it up, add it to the data points, and spit back out the garbage it was fed.
So now we come to a new idea. Federated social media. Say only people who have a library card to "The City of Metro Public Library" can post to the "metro-mastodon.social.xyz" endpoint. You can assure that is comes from somewhere, that the person had to at least show physical proof to get a library card, so you can assure at the very least that data point. And we can come up with all kinds of novel ways to "verify" social media accounts. But the thing is about this new idea, federated social media has the same issues as your standard grade social media. It isn't about bottom dollar, it's about the lack of verification. Federated social media isn't magically better than your for-profit social media. The worries of censorship or whatever still exists. Case in point the Fediverse and the Loli mastodon instances.
Now some would say that the "blue check mark" verifies the account. But when you have some news media site "with their blue check mark" quote tweeting some rando who "is spitting the truth", well there's where you have your breakdown. Verification only indicates the "who said it" not the "what was said". And this brings us to the **BAD**
But the algorithms that determine what enters peoples' social feeds
The answer here is, there shouldn't be any algorithms. All a computer making choices does is open those choices to being abused. I should subscribe and see what's in my subscription. If I want to listen to official messages from the USDA, then I subscribe and that's all that appears in my timeline until I add something else. Every algorithm will always suffer garbage in, garbage out. There's not a magical means to avoid this.
Reddit (where posts and comments' visibility is determined by user votes)
Anyone who suggests that anyone follow Reddit's mode of operation is someone you shouldn't listen to. The "voting algorithm" is very much broken there. Additionally the mod system on Reddit usually leads to God complexes. No, Reddit is hardly the model to follow.
could be decided collectively, according to groups' needs
One of the things that people tend to bemoan about Government is the complexity involved. But like many things, that complexity didn't just whip itself out of thin air. Communities need representatives, elections on them, boards that review moderation, appeals process that is open to public review, and so on. Pretty much online communities need "formal rules of governance". Some Mastodon instances offer this, some don't. But that's part in parcel the federated nature of the social network. Which means the ones that come from instances that are "less regulated" should more than likely be taken with a grain of salt.
The point being is that "federated" isn't a cure all. It doesn't stop censorship, it doesn't prevent a single point of failure, and so o
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Anyone who suggests that anyone follow Reddit's mode of operation is someone you shouldn't listen to. The "voting algorithm" is very much broken there.
Whether it's broken or not hinges entirely upon if you believe the default mode of online discussion should be that of a debate. Reddit's massive popularity seems to imply that there's a large demographic of folks who prefer the "echo chamber" concept instead. A lot of people don't want to go on the internet just to be on the receiving end of being told how wrong they are. Obligatory XKCD. [xkcd.com]
The existing social media paradigm already allows people to build their own echo chambers. On Facebook, you can unfo
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Shilling for Twitter won't save them.
Re:Twitter already has algo-free option - Followin (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh Twitter is well fucked. Musk seems hell bent on chasing off the average soccer mom type users who just want to look at cats and funny memes and not have hot headed political people yelling at them, and by sinking the celebrity blue ticks in favor of the $8 blue ticks ,increasingly those users are finding twitter more and more intolerable because of the major demographic of $8 blue ticks seeming to be crypto scammers and angry political people. I know my mother has given up. She just wants to talk to people about geneology, and read daft feel good stuff about wellness and the like. But increasingly she's finding those conversations derailed by people dropping in to yell at people about liberals or whatever.
Musk doesnt seem to understand that MOST people find that sort of constant all-politics-all-the-time anger posters to be toxic weirdos and what he THOUGHT would be chasing off the "left" is actualy just chasing off the middle class regular users who dont actually care about left vs right and especially dont want their friendly twitter feed clogged up with it.
Worse, by publishing the exact details of the algorithm, the place is going to get absolutely flooded with non-customer SEO spammers who now have a way to get engagement without paying for advertising.
Musk needs about half to 1 billion twitter blue subscribers to break even (At a rough guess). Thats nearly 3 times as many as there are total active users, and I'd suspect twitter blue accounts for 1-2% of users.
The straight up sabotage of that site by its own owner is an astonishing destruction of value the like I havent seen since Rupert Murdoch managed to completely destroy MySpace over a couple of months turning it from the OG social network to a ghost town.
Attention Millenials (Score:5, Insightful)
We had decentralised, non-profit, social media systems for over two decades before the year 2000. It had different names like "chat room", "bulletin board" (BBS), "Internet Relay Chat" (IRC), "Multi-User Dungeon"s (MUD) and even a few VR-based systems. They lacked some of the features of modern social media but only really due to the limitations of networks and hardware of the time.
The problem was big players with deep pockets came along and re-sold these ideas to the masses as proprietary systems. The big names were AOL, ICQ, MSN and later MySpace and eventually Facebook. None of these commercial offerings were particularly clever or ground-breaking, they just managed to achieve critical mass via heavy promotion.
There's already a modern, opensource, free, non-profit social media network called Masterdon but just like all the rest it can't get critical mass without the kind of marketing clout that only big corporations have. As a result until the world undergoes a radical shift from corporations having all the attention we're not going to see a popular free alternative.
Doesn't mean you can't join a free network right now, just means most of your friends won't be on it.
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And buzzzer time for "wrong!". Mastodon tried. It just had its moment. Tons of people from Twitter tried, very hard, to move to there. Mastodon sucks, almost no one stayed and it was free.
The deep pockets win because they can spend money on making things better, and then they monetize and ruin shit just enough to keep everyone from leaving. Because if everyone does leave, they do it for another monetized, but not shitty, platform.
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You may not wish to recognize it, but the successors to those original platforms were "particularly clever or groundbreaking". That's why they rocketed off the ground and became household terms while Usenet died.
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The only reason some people are looking for Twitter alternatives is they dislike some things that Elon Musk supports.
Oh, it's much, much, more than that!
I'd explain it to you, but you're probably already fully aware and just don't like the reality.
The only thing that could possibly save Twitter now is the complete reversal of all of Elmo's policies along with the complete removal of Elmo.
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I don't think so, I tried using Mastodon for a while but the problem is that using Mastodon is just fundamentally a worse experience all around than using Twitter. No amount of marketing can make people use a system that is worse.
My experience is the exact opposite, I'm not a big Mastodon user by any stretch but it actually works, unlike twitter. As in it lets me log in and basic stuff like that.
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The steps (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: A decentralized system is made
Step 2: It gets popular
Step 3: A company uses "money" to make an improved version of system with the improvements being proprietary, but it still works with the system
Step 4: The majority of people move to the improved version because who would willingly use the shitty version?
Step 5: The company now de facto controls the "decentralized" system
Note to anyone using Chrome, how does it feel to be an active participant of "the majority" in Step 4? You really sure "but it would work better if..." when you already failed?
If it weren't "for profit" (Score:2)
...Nobody could possibly afford to police it. Some people might think that's a good thing. I don't.
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If it was setup proper there wouldn't be a need for policing. Or even the concept of it. If the masses don't like someone they should vote them off the island. No police needed.
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In a federated system only Cloudflare and government have a voice for the entire system.
Sure, server owners have a voice for their server but whitelists don't scale and blacklists don't work.
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I know there are plenty of people who don't like the BBC because it's too-left (if you're a GB News type) or too-right (if you're a Momentum type), but I think they'd be almost perfectly placed to run a social network.
They're a public institution, but not government-controlled, trusted by the majority of people, and they're digitial types who have experience of doing things at scale.
I say almost because they have a brand to protect and that would lead them to tend to moderate too heavily. However, they coul
The Fediverse already exists! (Score:3)
Wikipedia? (Score:2)
Isn't Wikipedia a non-profit? Would that be an example of a non-profit tech company? It's got issues...but overall I think it's pretty good, and a bit of a framework for this topic.
So... the NextDoor app? (Score:2)
So... like Twitter? (Score:2)
A lot of things should be nonprofit. (Score:2)
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What if everything was not for profit? (Score:3)
Everything should be for people, not for profit, including, of course, social media. Not for profit should be the default, not the exception.
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Nothing would get done because the majority of people only work when it's in their own interest.
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Usenet v2 (Score:2)
It all sounds lovely and idealistic 'n' all. But just using transparent, open source code doesn't make something intrinsically good. The quality of the content reflects the quality of the people providing it. If that remains as low as it is, then no amount of decentralisation, community ownership, and democratic control, or algorithms, will make any difference.
Being (anti)social is for profit. By definition. (Score:3)
At first, you'll probably have a few people who will offer an idea, a thought, criticism, discussion, you name it. For free. Because they want to. Until suddenly one of them notices, "hey, I have a couple thousand people hanging on my lips, let's ask them for money so I can do this full time". Some of them will pay. This in turn will make people think "hey, if he can make a living telling people what they want to hear, why shouldn't I?", and the first bullshit peddler joins the fray, telling people what they want to hear and reinforcing their hopes, dreams, fears, stereotypes or harebrained lunacy, maybe because they actually also believe it, more likely because there's money to be made.
Next come those that promise the bullshit peddlers more eyeballs if they get a cut of the cake and you have the equivalent of SEO, videos and blogs promising to BLOW YOUR MIND (especially number 4) and clickbait-y nonsense that is optimized to cause a maximum of excitement, incitement or some other form of controversy, as long as a lot of people go there, click it and have a flamewar about it.
The idea that these things could be "social", as in, people getting together because they share an idea or ideal, is naive.
it would look like Chinas social network (Score:2)
Not for profit does not mean good. (Score:2)
Stupidly, the author of this article equates not for profit with some sort of moral imperative.
What if we all used a non-sh*tty ... (Score:2)
... open protocol for chatting, public chatting and comments, shoutouts and messaging?
Gee wizz, I really wonder ...
Facebook and Co. would use their business-case, that's what.
FB only exists because E-Mail is a protocol and service from the steam age of computing and we up till now couldn't be bothered to build a replacement.
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There was no need to replace usenet and email.
What we needed was another layer atop them.
This layer would use information in the existing messages to carry out communications, like cryptosignatures, additional headers, etc. It would provide some kind of trust model. You could switch out these models without changing the underlying transport.
Email seems a slightly unwieldy way to send IMs until you consider that the overall complexity of the task is rising all the time, and the overhead is minimal and effect
Mastodon .... (Score:2)
Mastodon is a not for profit social media
wrong link (Score:2)
just checking as to why the link for the story points to the next story ( about removing AM radio from Ford vehicles). Did no one else try to read the story or is this a new thing?
"not-for-profit" like big hospitals? (Score:2)
The precedent there is not very inspiring... Very large corporations with outsized influence on their local communities, but that don't pay taxes and are not accountable to anyone but their insider trustees...
Now taking bets (Score:2)
on how long it would take a social media platform based on these principles to turn into a troll pit.
Of all the things that won't happen this (Score:2)
will not happen the most. That idea must have radiated from a singularity of absurdity.
Or even if users were the customers? (Score:2)
Most studies seem to indicate social media can be a net positive in peoples lives when used to foster in-person relationships. What if social media companies said "Hey, that would c
Captain Obvious To The Rescue (Score:2)
How about this novel concept: Let the fucking user decide!
Like nat debt rises by social media's valuation (Score:2)
"What would it look like if we called time on Big Tech's failed experiment?"
If "we" is the government and "calling time" is a government mandate, it would look like the national debt rose by the valuation of the social media operations on which the government "called time". See the takings clause of the fifth amendment.
If "we" is the posters somehow mass-moving to an alternative, it MIGHT look the bulk of this item's discussion. Or the government might give them a bailout and we're back to the national deb
There are already nonprofit social networks (Score:2)
You mean, like
- HumHub
- Elgg
- Diaspora
- Open Source Social Network
- Tribe
https://blog.containerize.com/... [containerize.com]
Wait, you've never hear of them? That makes sense. It takes money, and lots of it, to market and run a mass-scale social network.
There is one you might have heard of: Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/ [joinmastodon.org] This one got a lot of users when Elon Musk bought Twitter, but has since fallen back to earth again. The problem with Mastodon is that it's a social network for nerds, requiring more than just creating a
The World Wide Web (Score:2)
Just imagine a system where you could post anything you wanted on a your own personal page: a picture of yourself, links, media, photos, calendars, stories, videos and music.. You could link to your friends pages or any topic you wanted. You could share your personal page with your friends, groups, or even the world. Let's make this page using a simple language anyone can understand that separates the content from the control of the displaying of the content.
See (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also News (Score:2)
Re:who pays the bills (Score:4, Interesting)
Not for profit are still allowed to gain HUGE amounts of revenue (just look at megachurch "non-profits"). You might think: "ah, but they need to spend all that money so they show zero gain at the end of the year. LOL. Also not true. It's called a "cash reserve". And there's no real limit to how large it can be. So, what's the difference between a profit corporation and a non-profit one? Perhaps just a mission statement. And even then, they are not *really* held to it by any sort of governing body. (Especially if it's vague. "Help other people in need".)
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The reporting requirements are very different, as are the rules about how they raise and distribute money.
"Non-profit" just means that the purpose of the organization is something in the public interest, and not to make a profit.
If you think you can run a non-profit like an ordinary for-profit company, you're going to find yourself in a lot of trouble.
even then, they are not *really* held to it by any sort of governing body
That's not even a little bit true. Even Florida, once the state most notorious for charity scams, has been cracking down hard in recent years. The same is t
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If all non-profit scams were shut down, there wouldn't be any churches open, lol.
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I seem to remember CNN as reliable, but they went crazy over Trump. I mean I hate Trump, but I could not watch CNN when he was in office - they were simply unable to remain objective.
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Community-driven projects tend to fall on the left side of the political spectrum because cooperation and working together towards a common goal without expecting to be paid for it are leftist ideals.
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Normal, decent, thinking people get hated, cancelled and censored.
And who is talking about not getting paid - there is a WHOLE LOT of money in not-for-profits.
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Except for today's woke that cooperation is only with people who agree with the nonsense they have been indoctrinated with.
Disagreeing over indoctrinated beliefs is essentially part of the human condition. New forms of communications technology do not make people set their tribalistic tendencies aside; if anything humans have an uncanny ability to beat plowshares into swords and use new technologies to further reinforce their beliefs that other = bad.
And who is talking about not getting paid - there is a WHOLE LOT of money in not-for-profits.
It depends. Churches are certainly very successful at the not-for-profit business model. Probably something about the potential for an eternity of damnation that makes the pocke
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I know you are but what am I? ;)
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Now back to the basement and mommy will bring your meds down soon.
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The hateful woke won a long time ago.
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