Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet

Re:Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet by skybrian on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @12:00PM (#12166544)

We have feudalism because spam and abuse make everything suck. That means you need user accounts that are at least somewhat hard to abuse or the sock-puppet problem becomes unmanageable, and automated filters for the spam, and ways to block abusive users, and moderators to appeal to when users can't solve things on their own.

These things can't be fully automated and they aren't fun for volunteers so businesses end up hiring people to do them.

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Re:Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet by fulafel on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @12:49PM (#12166954)

Pseudonymous identities with reputations and decentalised webs of reputation would be the solution in the old school spirit. But since things like Google and Facebook are financed by ads and trade of personally identifiable information, the incentives don't really align.

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Re:Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet by skybrian on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @03:44PM (#12168265)

The way you talk you'd think real names were invented by advertisers. Um, no. There are plenty of good reasons to use real names that have nothing to do with advertising.

Handles work well for CB radio, BBS's, games, and other geeky pursuits. In the early days, your friends and relatives weren't online anyway, so why not use a handle?

But they don't work for relatives, offline friends, businesses, politicians, or really, any of the other ways we use our real names.

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Re:Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet by vertex-four on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @04:06PM (#12168400)

See, the idea of a singular real name is interesting to me - I have a small handful of names I'd consider "real". It's the same with a fair few people I know, to varying extents, due to the groups I'm involved in.

The ability to use many names is strongly tied to the ability to identify yourself. Being forced to use a single name in all contexts, whether you want to or not, is relinquishing that ability - it's being told who you are permitted to be by an external force.

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Re:Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet by fulafel on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @03:50PM (#12168295)

You could still publish an assertion about a real name, but the foundations need not require it to be public information.

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Re:Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet by Joof on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @04:52PM (#12168658)

Really? Most people call me something other than my birth name. This is why some forms ask for aliases.

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Re:Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet by ktRolster on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @03:46PM (#12168278)

Yet another reason to encourage ad-blocking.

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Re:Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet by api on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @04:25PM (#12168514)

It's not just financial. Those things are incredibly hard for ordinary people (or busy technical people) to understand and use. Only nerds with lots of time on their hands use such systems.

My UX rule of thumb is: every step required to set up or otherwise adopt a new technology cuts adoption in half.

Example: if your audience consists of a million people and it takes 10 steps to set something up, about a thousand people will end up using it.

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