Re:My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook ...
by josephg on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @09:54AM
(#29000401)
> Hopefully these aren't the same people expressing these contradictory points of view.
I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like.
I see social networks (and in many ways the internet as a whole) like a new country we’ve founded. It’s a bit different from countries made out of atoms. For a start, everyone there is a dual citizen with somewhere in meatspace. And instead of community centres we build websites. But it’s a place.
How are those spaces governed? Is it a democracy? No. Each social network is its own mostly benevolent corporate dictatorship. If you don’t like the rules, your only option is banishment.
Healthy communities (in healthy society) need rules to keep bad actors in check. And freedom to explore and be ourselves. Healthy communities in real life use participatory processes to figure out what those rules should be. You need people to feel like they have a voice. It’ll never be perfect. And different rules will make sense for different groups.
Facebook’s problem is they’re trying to be the government, the judiciary and police for billions of people from every country on the planet. There is no single set of rules and policies which will work everywhere. And even if there was, how do you police billions of people? AIs make mistakes.
I don’t know how, but I think FB needs to eat humble pie and find ways for communities to decide on (and enforce) their own social norms somehow. It’d be messy and disjointed, but so are people. Reddit and discord do this - although they’re obviously very different products.
Tyrannies don’t have a strong history of making choices which primarily benefit their citizens. So far, facebook’s track record hasn’t been much better. To improve, they need to acknowledge the position they’re in, learn from history and give some power back to the people who populate their site.
I see social networks (and in many ways the internet as a whole) like a new country we’ve founded. It’s a bit different from countries made out of atoms. For a start, everyone there is a dual citizen with somewhere in meatspace. And instead of community centres we build websites. But it’s a place.
How are those spaces governed? Is it a democracy? No. Each social network is its own mostly benevolent corporate dictatorship. If you don’t like the rules, your only option is banishment.
Healthy communities (in healthy society) need rules to keep bad actors in check. And freedom to explore and be ourselves. Healthy communities in real life use participatory processes to figure out what those rules should be. You need people to feel like they have a voice. It’ll never be perfect. And different rules will make sense for different groups.
Facebook’s problem is they’re trying to be the government, the judiciary and police for billions of people from every country on the planet. There is no single set of rules and policies which will work everywhere. And even if there was, how do you police billions of people? AIs make mistakes.
I don’t know how, but I think FB needs to eat humble pie and find ways for communities to decide on (and enforce) their own social norms somehow. It’d be messy and disjointed, but so are people. Reddit and discord do this - although they’re obviously very different products.
Tyrannies don’t have a strong history of making choices which primarily benefit their citizens. So far, facebook’s track record hasn’t been much better. To improve, they need to acknowledge the position they’re in, learn from history and give some power back to the people who populate their site.