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Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

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Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#121

Post by MaxBarraclough »

decasia wrote: post #7

The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…

You need to address the question of federation.

If you have a thousand unconnected small networks, you're going to be unable to compete with worldwide networks.

Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#123

Post by darkerside »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #97
decasia wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I don't think it's likely that government-provided social software would work all that well in the contemporary USA (unless they built it with better security and privacy than they have ever wanted to see in the private sector), but the government can be seen as a version of cooperative funding and it's certainly worth thinking about. I would like it if my local government funde…

I think the bigger problem in the US would be how to deal with free-speech issues. It either has to be moderated (sorry, no free speech here!) or it will be overrun by trolls, spammers, and other evils.

That's a great point. No need for moderation through postal mail because it's all 1-to-1 communication. OTOH, all broadcast media is heavily moderated today.

Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#124

Post by lucideer »

decasia wrote: post #7

The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…

This is different, but with some minor modifications this sounds a lot like Scuttlebutt. Have you tried Patchwork?

> you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?)

People individually run "pubs", which are servers (with hosting costs), but every user also acts as a potential server, caching and proxying encrypted communications on behalf of other users, which acts as a sort of "cost", though it's not directly monetary.

> software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance

Apart from the central protocol, niche needs are met by various clients—e.g. there is a dedicated chess client for users who just want to play chess over the social network.

> need not be exclusive of technical leadership

While the SSBC is in no way dictatorial and even often jokey, I think their clients demonstrate exceptional technical leadership. The strategy of having a protocol with many clients usually leads to having many disparate clients of low quality. On the contrary, most users use Patchwork, the main stable SSBC-maintained client; it's the most "Facebook-ish" of the clients and is very intuitive.

Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#125

Post by warkdarrior »

rsync wrote: post #103
decasia wrote: post #7

The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…

"The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community" No fees, no development needed, lightweight and has been working for decades : A listserv. Everything else is just ca…

Candy is what attracts and keeps people on Facebook, instead of using a listserv.

Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#126

Post by recursive »

jpindar wrote: post #110
izzydata wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense, writing a whole book about your decision to delete some social media accounts is just as bad as social media. The whole world doesn't need to know about every mundane detail about your life. You can do things and not feel inclined to tell everyone about it.

How do you know someone doesn't use social media? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

You're the first person I've told about it during the last 6 months.

Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#127

Post by jvagner »

Jaruzel wrote: post #95
UsernameProxy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the merge? _shudder_

Well... Facebook is worth ~$15bn and Google is worth ~$740bn. I'm sure Google could scrounge up 2% of it's overall worth to buy-out Facebook... but then, Google already know everything about you, so for them, Facebooks data is worthless.

Your Alphabet/Google market cap is about right, but Facebook's is 442.50B as of today.

Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#128

Post by sizzle »

athenot wrote: post #57
JepZ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, while I dream the same dream, it feels awkward asking my family and friends to pay 5€ per year so that we can share the cost of running our XMPP-Server. Currently, I pay all the bills and manage the server myself (so no cost/effort for them), and they still keep using WhatsApp with most of their contacts. I don't know what the root of that evil is, but there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved. First of a…

This is all summed up in one word: friction. What the big platforms have done is eliminate friction at all the critical parts, to make it easy for users to onboard, easy to share, easy to grow within the platform, and of course hard to leave. I've been thinking about a low cost but not free platform too. If it ever happens, it will have to be AT LEAST as frictionless and enticing as the existing platforms. The table…

I'm curious, can anyone estimate the developer hours it would take to clone WhatsApp's UX, features and functionality? Would it be doable since it's already developed and they solved the hard problems for syncing messages across timezones and it may be feasible to follow their tech stack as a blueprint/starting point?

Facebook and Instagram had no trouble stealing the concept of 'stories' from Snapchat and Facebook also copied their augmented face masks.

Did WhatsApp use a lot of open source stuff under the covers that we could leverage in building our own secure person to person/ group chat platform?

Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#129

Post by azangru »

> Well, a pretty good test for whether a platform is BUMMER, is whether the Russian intelligence warfare units like the Internet Research Agency decided to target it and use it for manipulating people. That’s a really good measure. And so, if that’s the way you’re going to classify BUMMER, then the list is Facebook, Google including YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and, of course, a few other Facebook properties like Instagram. There are a few others out there, but those are the primary ones. Snapchat is an interesting one. I just spent some time with them and they’re sort of an edge case; they’re better, but they still have some problems.

> Another example is LinkedIn, which has some addictive techniques but doesn’t seem to bring out the worst in people. So, you know, I don’t think this is exactly a universal criticism of the whole idea of social media — in fact, I’m sure it isn’t. I’m sure there could be better social media. Basically, if Putin was there, maybe you shouldn’t go there. Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb. Basically, don’t sleep in the bed where anybody who works for Putin has been lately. I think it’s a very good rule for us all to follow.

It never ceases to surprise me how any mention of the Russian spooks in the context of social media inevitably comes to the same conclusion: you cannot co-exist with them. Either you fight them (which is the mainstream position) by demanding that social networks ban them, or you leave the social network.

Weirdly, there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. I do not hear of any messages directed at users about developing some sort of online personal hygiene. Maybe take any ads with a grain of salt? Maybe do not trust total strangers until you get to know their online personality (if you are interested in their opinion at all)? Maybe limit your social circles? Maybe exercise more self-control in online debates? There are probably numerous other suggestions of how to be a more intelligent consumer of media content. And then Putin won't be such a comical bogeyman of online media he has lately become.

Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

#130

Post by lazyjones »

tsunamifury wrote: post #96
lazyjones wrote: post #73

I would be interested in his opinion about slapping the user in the face with greyed-out content and a subscription box on top when he tries to follow a link to read this interview. Isn't this a great example for how the digital world doesn't let us do what we intend to and doesn't deliver on its promises?

Jaron supports premium payment for articles. I don’t know why so many hacker news readers both are illogically irate about paywalls and also irate about data collection. The irony is almost overwhelming.

> I don’t know why so many hacker news readers both are illogically irate about paywalls and also irate about data collection.

I have no idea what you are rambling about. The dark pattern demonstrated behind the article link is modal newsletter subscription boxes in front of the content, i.e. distracting, disrupting the user's reading to show him something he didn't click the link for. It's annoying, it wastes time and energy and it makes the web unattractive like dumb clickbait headlines when following a descriptive link doesn't lead to the promised content (without extra effort).

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