>Wikipedia is another example [of the public square]
Quite the opposite; Wikipedia is explicitly based on published reliable sources. They have a specific rule[1] excluding information that was not published in such way.
There are certain advantages to this rule, and its utility has been validated through Wikipedia's long, and ongoing, run. Nonetheless this cathedral mindset cannot be compared to a public square in any way other than being a very opposite.
In particular the published reliable sources rule excludes general blogs and public forums and the likes, thus excluding the majority of discourse & voices on the internet. Even expert sources, if self-published, can only be used in limited way and with caution.
--
[1] "If no reliable sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
>a forum for free thought >if it [isn't] policed by content moderators around a set of culture rules
The rules are mostly invisible to us because we are surrounded with, and submersed in, this very culture 24/7.
To get written up in Wikipedia one must first get published in a reliable source. This mostly means a journal or "books published by respected publishing houses" (full list: [1]). The publishing is the gatekeeper here; the wikipedia moderators are a secondary consideration.
This does indeed silence out a priori (i.e., censors) ideas that are culturally unpopular or frowned upon or just held by small number of individuals. To avoid muddling the argument with hot button issues, here's a very mild and barely objectionable example: picoLisp, a modern interpreted programming language with dynamic scoping. Having it written up, and then kept, in Wikipedia is an uphill struggle spanning years, and with sad reversals & losses. And that's with ideas that are only mildly unpopular.
Again, Wikipedia's utility is clear and recognized. Let's just not mix it up with a public square.
--
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#What_c...
This is wikipedia co-founder writing this.
In my opinion, the bias is primarily derived from the bias of the sources Wikipedia uses, with influence by the WP editors being only a secondary influence.
Wikipedia is certainly biased, but in what topics are covered, not the content itself. I think they had an example that the article for the Falklands war was longer than the Congo civil war, the deadliest conflict since WW2.
Whatever issues social media has encountered around politics, covid, etc. are arguably more acute for wikipedia... because of its authority and role as a source of objective information. Meanwhile, it has handled everything much better by default. That's why we don't think of it as part of the social media problem.
Wikipedia has became part of the media ecosystem, not much different from any other part of the media ecosystem.
Journalists at typical outlets are also engaged in re-publishing -edited or verbatim- content from other outlets. Among those practices, churnalism [1].
--
Agreed - Wikipedia is not news media.
Instead it's media fact & opinion aggregator and editor. It does function as media platform, with content provided by the media and only by the media. The editors' opinions are a secondary consideration; they are obliged by the rules to only ever derive content from the published reliable sources.
My "not much different from any other part of the media ecosystem" statement is connected with how the ideas & opinions flowing back and forth between Wikipedia and other medias (as shown in the citogenesis xkcd) - a process that's typical, even characteristic, of media.
I’d like to run the numbers on how long fugitives escape justice when they’re targeted by bounty hunters, placed on most wanted lists or other red notices, or both. It’s not always good innocent guys getting caught by good innocent law enforcement, either. Entrapment and parallel construction exist. Ideally the crimes or criminal intent to justify all this apparatus actually exist too, right? Some people may not care about justifications; feels over reals, basically.
The people involved may believe they are correct to work for private authoritarian companies, or public ones; I guess that’s hypercapitalism for you.
Not surprisingly, network effects are pervasive on the network, and with everything moving to the network, network effects will dominate almost everything unless something is done to deal explicitly with network-effect-based monopolies. Just imagine email if you couldn't email anyone who didn't have an email address at the same company you have yours. Almost all email would begin to consolidate in the winning company, which would then begin telling people what could and couldn't be said in email. They could cut you off from email and destroy businesses for violating whatever "terms of service" they felt like imposing or even accidentally. Too bad for you.
I think the answer to network-effects monopolies is to force them to switch to an open protocol once they crossed a threshold of a certain number of users. They could then continue to offer services, but other companies and agencies could also put you on "the network". Companies could stay small and retain full control or grow and be forced to open so their competitors and users couldn't be locked out (or in).
I worked at a large social media company (not large by modern tier 1 social media network standards). We handled well over 10M users, but the company is dying / died. The technology still works, but the mindshare was lost and users jump ship faster when the network effect stops being an asset.
So ABC, NBC, CBS are all private companies and they are much older than Twitter. How is it that they can be regulated by the FCC?
> Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook?
Are you saying that if FB had a smaller headcount or budget, they'd be less influential? A company's headcount and budget are largely a function of the market, and the market highly values FB. If you have a problem with the economics of FB, you have a problem with the market forces that created it. But you end with:
> I hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow
If you're not happy that the market created conditions for companies like FB to grow to the size that they are, and you're also not happy that regulation is possibly in the future of these companies, then how would you like to see this scenario play out?
The best scenario is for FB to stay at early 2000 version, where our feeds full of friend's stories, games and some ads. Now it's full of media, arguably some pushes political agenda, intrusive advertising (tracking ads), and a few of friend's feed.
Then imo, not all regulations are good. Because fb is a political platform, the regulation for sosmed is more likely full with political agenda too.
To the second part... I don't have full answers. I would like this scenario play out to a free media outcome. Decentralisation, and ideally, a lot of commercialisation too. More wikipedias, WWWs. Fewer FBs. Disintermediation. Commodification of bottlenecks like youtube has... owning the relationship between video maker and video watcher. The ideals that made the internet work in the first place.
That's not something a politician can give us though. No one decided that wikipedia or WWW would win. It happened. What I want from politicians is a laundry list:
(1) Trustbusting. The Facebook's acquisitions of whatsapp & IG should never have happened, for example. Youtube should be split from Google (and adwords from search... off topic).
Also, modern antitrust needs to recognize the economic realities of these businesses. This isn't a railroad monopoly or Bell. There are no capital costs and there is no major danger of harming the public interest by sinking the industry. Social media will exist whether or not FB is worth $1trn. That money does not represent "capital" in the productive capacity sense, it just represents earning potential.
(2) Different rules for giant companies. Rules should apply only to designated giant companies. The biggest problems are size related. Be explicitly skeptical of size. Data laws. Copyright enforcement. User content liability. Fairness requirements. etc. A normal regulator will enforce the monopolies which create the underlying problems. We need an explicitly "large company" set of rules, including tax rules.
(3) Much stronger fair use and public domain rules. A complete rethinking. Eg, if a politician gives an interview... this should be public domain or under extremely strong fair use protection.
This is another area where we need to consider modern economic realities. For said political interview, you could preserve most of the financial value (and incentive) with a copyright limited to one week.
(4) Non-consumer rights in regards to monopolies. If facebook, youtube or amazon ban you, this is a public matter. It's more akin to blackballing than "please leave this bar." Everyone needs protections from monopolies, especially non consumers. Once companies are in that size range, they need to
(5) Data use transparency laws. FB political advertising is an extreme example. Half the shit they do wouldn't stand the light of day. Some of it is borderline treason. Shine that light. Full data dumps of ads, targeting criteria, etc. Publish ad matching algorithms. Give the public access to everything the advertiser has access to...
... the list gets long.
What were the public public squares and the private public squares before Twitter was developed?
Understanding the historic context of these forums is pretty important.
I would argue there have only been remarkably few public public squares since property became privatized.
Do we not want a public square?
I'd prefer we go a federated route, like Mastodon. That way the servers are private, but the system as a whole is not controlled by a central authority. Can't find a server that will let you express what you want to express? Roll your own. Don't want to hear about Emacs ever again, join a vi-only server, or a never-emacs server.
The problem is that Twitter is a private public square. That contradiction is not something JD can accept, because "his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It isn't reconcilable.
We don't have many examples, in modern times, of of non-companies filling roles like Twitter of FB fill. But, that doesn't mean they can't exist.
The WWW itself is a platform for speech and is a "public square." Wikipedia is another example. A really good example, if you think about it. If wikipedia was a commercial company, imagine the issues they'd be facing... all that authority as an information source.
Meanwhile, we really need to consider the economics of companies like twitter & facebook. Does FB really need 50k employees and a $70bn budget to provide the world with facebook? This isn't a question you could ask about Toyota.
If Facebook fell off the edge of the disc, we would very quickly have a replacement. People wouldn't lack for social media. If Toyota fell off the disc, we would have fewer cars. Rebuilding that capacity would require real resources.. Until then, we'd lack for cars.
This last part is key. Commercial viability is nearly a non-issue. Social media can be viable on a tiny fraction of its current revenue. This explodes the number of possible actions.
I really hope we're not heading for a regulatory shitshow... I hope, but I can't say I'm optimistic.