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WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

seirdy.one

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Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#51

Post by devmunchies »

optimalsolver wrote: post #17
devmunchies wrote: post #9

"domestication" makes me think of "oversocialization" used in the unabomber manifesto[1]. > 24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. > ... > 26. Oversocialization can le…

So what were his alternatives? That society be made up of loosely-connected hermits such as himself? If you're going to have anything resembling a community, you're going to need strongly enforced norms (aka "oversocialization") that minimize internal strife and division. This is true for hunter-gatherer bands and continent-spanning civilizations.

you don't need to be oversocialized or anti-social. You can be balanced. Being oversocialzed means you aren't taking any risks or being rebellious at all. Society needs some rebels if we want to break major milestones.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#53

Post by worker767424 »

strogonoff wrote: post #37

Social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. (I prefer the term “lock-in” over “domestication” to highlight the ethically questionable nature of it.) A piece of US legislation could address this. For example, if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could b…

> if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could be required to allow fully-featured third-party clients to exist

I might get some of the details wrong, but AT&T was forced to let smaller ISPs or telcos into their exchanges so they could set up equipment and act as an independent ISP on AT&T's copper. This wasn't huge win for small ISPs; AT&T still got most of the DSL orders, and it had a rough time competing with cable.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#54

Post by hnick »

koolba wrote: post #43
hnick wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And chat history, if it's relevant. I think it is possible to export and browse chat history 'offline' but it's not trivial. Simply transferring my history from Android to IOS was a pain and I gave up, but I still have the backup somewhere just in case.

> And chat history, if it's relevant. Losing your chat history might be a blessing in disguise.

I'm stuck between trying again with a new app after a failed merge, or letting it go. It is oddly liberating but I am a sentimental hoarder by nature so I feel like I lost something special.

Though the history might actually be useful for some people in business or divorce proceedings and that sort of thing.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#55

Post by Seirdy »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #41
strogonoff wrote: post #37

Social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. (I prefer the term “lock-in” over “domestication” to highlight the ethically questionable nature of it.) A piece of US legislation could address this. For example, if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could b…

> ... social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. What's the incentive though? That approximately zero user would ever pay for a social media or messaging app? I think they simply have no other viable business model whatsoever.

[Am author] The best alternative is not to need a business model for anything besides sponsoring development; there shouldn't be a single organization that needs a large sum of money to keep a platform alive. From the article:

> Not all software needs to rake in billions. Federation allows services and networks like the Fediverse and XMPP to scale up to large numbers of users without forcing a single behemoth to sell its soul to foot the bill. Although anti-domestication business models are less profitable, they still allow the creation of the same technologies that were enabled by user domestication. All that’s missing is an advertising budget; the biggest advertising some of these projects get is long unpaid blog posts.

Instead of building a platform that requires one actor to scale up to millions of users, build a platform that's simple enough for it to require less development effort and scale to only a few hundred/thousand users per federated server. Delegate hosting to the 0.05% of users willing and technical enough to run a server.

The Fediverse has scaled to millions of users with a grand total of $0.00 VC money.

Related: when people first envisioned the ideas that led to networks like the Web, sceptics would ask questions such as "Who's going to pay to make all those hyperlinks? What's the financial incentive to upload a document?"

If a system is designed right, there doesn't need to be a financial incentive (i.e., an ROI) to grow.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#56

Post by Seirdy »

rkagerer wrote: post #52

Hadn't heard the term "User Domestication" before but I love it. Great description.

It was just a random phrase that my hands typed in IRC with minimal direction from my brain; I sarcastically said "yes, sending plaintext over the Internet was literally impossible before the widespread domestication of users". I honestly have no idea how the hell I came up with that.

(yes, I understand that messaging apps are more than sending text over the Internet; it was a bad joke).

I read what I wrote and thought that it was a clever phrase. One day and like 2500 words later, here we are :).

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#57

Post by strogonoff »

dannyobrien wrote: post #40
strogonoff wrote: post #37

Social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. (I prefer the term “lock-in” over “domestication” to highlight the ethically questionable nature of it.) A piece of US legislation could address this. For example, if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could b…

This is pretty much what the ACCESS Act proposes: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/legislative-path-inter...

I actually wish that proposal was leaner… unless they intentionally put in extra parts they could sacrifice during negotiation.

“Prove that a third-party client with feature parity to yours can function on top your platform” could probably be the sole requirement, taking care of both back-end interoperability and ‘delegability’ (which to be honest I suspect is an unnecessarily obscure term).

Data portability could be a good next step, but I’m not sure it’s strictly necessary to fundamentally shift incentives.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#58

Post by Seirdy »

elif wrote: post #16
bambax wrote: post #15

> Free calls helped it grow to become the de-facto communication platform in many other countries. Other countries? Other from what? The non-other country isn't defined in the paragraph leading to this sentence. Like many people I detest Facebook and don't defend it. But this is sloppy writing and sloppy thinking.

Americentrism I'm sure.

[Am author] Agreed that this section was insensitive and Americentric. I've since re-worded and expanded that bit.

Diff: https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one/commit/51c84cebf17b5091...

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#59

Post by toast0 »

worker767424 wrote: post #53
strogonoff wrote: post #37

Social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. (I prefer the term “lock-in” over “domestication” to highlight the ethically questionable nature of it.) A piece of US legislation could address this. For example, if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could b…

> if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could be required to allow fully-featured third-party clients to exist I might get some of the details wrong, but AT&T was forced to let smaller ISPs or telcos into their exchanges so they could set up equipment and act as an independent ISP on AT&T's copper. This wasn't huge win for small…

Line shared DSL had a lot of problems in the US, but it worked well overseas.

For one, AT&T got most of the orders because their retail prices were often lower (sometimes quite a bit lower) than the wholesale prices they charged to smaller ISPs. It's really hard to compete like that. Add in fun things like initially line shared services were often over dry pair (no dial tone) and telephone company lineman often used dial tone to see if a pair was in use; leading to loss of service if a pair was repurposed for another customer.

The alternative for small ISPs was somehow find a way to overbuild a 3rd network in the area, or sell out to Earthlink, or to someone who sold out to Earthlink.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#60

Post by strogonoff »

worker767424 wrote: post #53
strogonoff wrote: post #37

Social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. (I prefer the term “lock-in” over “domestication” to highlight the ethically questionable nature of it.) A piece of US legislation could address this. For example, if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could b…

> if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could be required to allow fully-featured third-party clients to exist I might get some of the details wrong, but AT&T was forced to let smaller ISPs or telcos into their exchanges so they could set up equipment and act as an independent ISP on AT&T's copper. This wasn't huge win for small…

It can be different (better) in case of social—I don’t think forcing the largest player to let competitors use its infrastructure is required.
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