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7 votes
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Urbit: A Personal Identity Server
6 votes -
The internet doesn't have to be awful
8 votes -
Why popular YouTubers are building their own sites
17 votes -
History of dunking culture's transformation into the alt right, the reputation of Tumblr
15 votes -
Jack Dorsey: Bids reach $2.5m for Twitter co-founder's first post
8 votes -
Spoonbill—a change-tracker for Twitter bios—offers a glimpse into the unseen effort with which we express our identities online, and how the uncanny feeling of being watched informs our sense of self
8 votes -
Thoughts on running online communities from the creator of Improbable Island
15 votes -
Gab removes their public Git repository after it reveals their developers adding (and struggling to fix) basic security issues that led to a 70GB data leak
12 votes -
How would you improve advertising on Reddit?
Let me preface that I'm well aware that if given the choice between frequent, untargeted ads or fewer targeted ads, the average Tilderino's response would be "Neither." However, given that social...
Let me preface that I'm well aware that if given the choice between frequent, untargeted ads or fewer targeted ads, the average Tilderino's response would be "Neither."
However, given that social media at scale has yet to establish a sustainable business model that doesn't rely on advertising (people like free content, after all), it seems advertising has become a necessary evil (and has pervaded nearly all forms of media for the past century regardless).
With that in mind, I think coming up with creative solutions to deliver relevant advertising while preserving user privacy and avoiding destructive feedback loops (i.e. where the search for ad revenue compromises the user base and content generation) is an interesting thought exercise. This is one of social media's largest problems, imho, but it might be easier to analyze just Reddit as a platform due to its similarities (and notable differences) to Tildes.
A couple thoughts of my own:
- Whitelist "safe" subreddits - A massive problem for Reddit is identifying content that brands want to avoid association with (e.g. porn, violence, drugs). While new subreddits crop up every day, the large ones do not change so fast and could be classified as safe content spaces (e.g. /r/aww)
- User subreddit subscriptions - Rather than target ads based on the subreddit currently being viewed, why not use the subs people have voluntarily indicated they are interested in?
- Allow users to tag content - While people can report content to the mods today, there is no ability to tag content (like Tildes has) from a user level. Content that's inappropriate for advertising may not necessarily be a reportable offense. By allowing users to classify content, better models for determining "good" content vs. "bad" could be developed using ML.
- Use Mods to determine content appropriateness - User supplied data may introduce too much noise into any given dataset, and perhaps mods are a better subjective filter to rely on. Certain subreddits can have biased mods for sure, but without trying to overhaul content moderation entirely, could mod bans/flair be used to indicate suitable content for ads?
- Use computer vision to classify content - While this wouldn't work at scale, an up-and-coming post could have a nebulous title and difficult-to-decipher sarcastic comments. The post itself could be an image macro or annotated video that could be used to determine the subject matter much more effectively.
To be clear, the spirit of my initial prompt isn't "how can Reddit make more money?" per se, but how can it find a sustainable business model without destroying itself/impacting society at large. Facebook and Twitter seem to have optimized for "engagement" metrics which leads to prioritization of outrage porn and political divisiveness. Snapchat and Instagram seem to have succumb to being mostly an ad delivery engine with some overly-filtered content of "real life" influencers (read: marketers) strewn in between. None of these seem like a net-good for society.
What are all your thoughts? Perhaps Big Tech social media is irredeemable at this point, but I'm trying not to take such a defeatist attitude and instead explore any positive solutions.
9 votes -
The garden of forking memes
8 votes -
Facebook is a global mafia
10 votes -
Liat Kaplan - "I was 'Your Fave is Problematic'"
4 votes -
Reddit: Organized lightning
13 votes -
Reddit has raised $368 million in Series E funding, at a $6 billion valuation
15 votes -
Facebook to lift Australia news ban after government agrees to amendments to proposed legislation requiring them to pay publishers
6 votes -
Hogwarts Legacy lead designer used to run anti-social justice Youtube channel
14 votes -
How Twitch chat got a World Record on Marbles (on Stream)
6 votes -
Facebook will ban Australian users from sharing or viewing news
18 votes -
Social media platform Parler is back online with new hosting
10 votes -
YouTubers have to declare ads. Why doesn't anyone else?
24 votes -
Is social media hijacking our minds?
6 votes -
Gina Carano fired from ‘Mandalorian’ after social media post
21 votes -
Officer plays copyrighted music while being filmed
21 votes -
No, getting rid of anonymity will not fix social media; it will cause more problems
16 votes -
A twenty-year-old man was fatally shot while filming a YouTube "prank" robbery
16 votes -
Reddit Search.io
6 votes -
Parler CEO John Matze says he was terminated by the company's board, which is controlled by investor Rebekah Mercer
8 votes -
Why you should delete social media: Say hello to a better life!
8 votes -
Who do you follow on Twitter?
(Asked mainly because I just made an account there and there are only a handful of twitter profiles which immediately come to my mind as profiles to follow.)
7 votes -
Who's on the fediverse?
There was a thread about this coincidentally exactly one year ago, give or take three hours. Ah, to be back in January 2020 I've been poking around on the fediverse again and I figured I'll never...
There was a thread about this coincidentally exactly one year ago, give or take three hours. Ah, to be back in January 2020
I've been poking around on the fediverse again and I figured I'll never start using it unless I'm following some people. So, who here is on it? Please share some other people you follow, if you like.
I made an account a while back, and it was on the default instance since I didn't know any others to choose. I feel like it's a deliberate choice though (if nothing else it will give me a more curated timeline to scroll through) so I'd like to be deliberate about it at some point.
17 votes -
With Parler down, QAnon moves onto a ‘free speech’ TikTok clone
10 votes -
Facebook's Oversight Board announces its first decisions, overturning Facebook's decision in four out of five cases
8 votes -
Why is Big Tech policing speech? Because the government isn't: Deplatforming President Trump showed that the First Amendment is broken - but not in the way his supporters think.
12 votes -
Grindr fined 10% of their global annual revenue ($11.7 million) in Norway for sharing deeply personal information with advertisers, including location, sexual orientation and mental health details
28 votes -
Twitter has acquired the Revue editorial newsletter service, made Pro features free and reduced the fee for paid newsletters to 5%, and will start integrating it into Twitter
7 votes -
Twitter announces Birdwatch, a community-based approach to misinformation
21 votes -
YouTube takes action against piracy tutorials, stream-ripping and cheating
10 votes -
An understanding of Orwell's 1984 from someone who has never read it
6 votes -
Italy takes action against TikTok following girl’s death
5 votes -
A positive ContentID story
4 votes -
Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
7 votes -
Storming Reddit's moat
18 votes -
What Parler saw during the attack on the Capitol: Curated videos, arranged on a timeline
23 votes -
Are there any viable alternatives for Facebook?
A lot of people are currently switching over from WhatsApp to Signal right now, and the two are comparable enough that Signal can pretty much act as a drop-in replacement for WhatsApp. They have...
A lot of people are currently switching over from WhatsApp to Signal right now, and the two are comparable enough that Signal can pretty much act as a drop-in replacement for WhatsApp. They have very comparable features, and Signal is easy enough to use that it's adoptable by non-techy people.
Does something similar exist for Facebook? I'm fully aware of the network effects that keep people on Facebook, but let's pretend a lot of people wanted to leave that platform and migrate elsewhere. Is there anything that has a similar featureset and that is usable by the general population?
22 votes -
Nearly 1.6 million Illinois Facebook users to get about $350 each in privacy settlement
7 votes -
The Great Deplatforming: An alternate explanation for the Parler, et al, shutdowns
A common current narrative is that tech monopolists are suddenly acting of their own initiative and in concert to deplatform the burgeoning fascist insurgent movement within the US. I approve the...
A common current narrative is that tech monopolists are suddenly acting of their own initiative and in concert to deplatform the burgeoning fascist insurgent movement within the US. I approve the deplatforming strongly, though I suspect an alternative significant motivating and coordfinating factor.
An example of the "tech monopoly abuse" narrative is Glenn Greenwald's more than slightly unhinged "How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler"
Greenwald's argument hinges on emotion, insinuation, invective, a completely unfounded premise, an absolute absence of evidence, and no consideration of alternative explanations: an overwhelmingly plausible ongoing law enforcement and national security operation, likely under sealed or classified indictments or warrants, in the face of ongoing deadly sedition lead by the President of the United States himself, including against the person of his own vice president and credible threats against the President-Elect and Inauguration.
Such an legal action is, of course, extraordinarily difficult to prove, and I cannot prove it. A critical clue for me, however, is the defection not just of Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Stripe, and other tech firms, but of Parler's legal counsel, who would have to be an exceptionally stealth-mode startup to fit Greenwald's, or other's, "it's the tech monopolists" narrative. I've tempered my degree of assurance and language ("plausible" rather than "probable"). Time will tell. But a keen and critical mind such as Grenwald's should at least be weighing the possibility. He instead seems bent only on piking old sworn enemies, with less evidence or coherence than I offer.
This is the crux of Greenwald's argument. It's all he's got:
On Thursday, Parler was the most popular app in the United States. By Monday, three of the four Silicon Valley monopolies united to destroy it.
I'm no friend of the tech monopolists myself. The power demonstrated here does concern me, greatly. I've long railed against Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple, among other tech monopolists. Largely because as monopolies they are power loci acting through their occupation of a common resource, outside common control, and not serving the common weal. Hell: Facebook, Google (YouTube), Reddit, and Twitter played a massive role in creating the current fascist insurrection in the US, along with even more enthusiastic aid and comfort from traditional media, across the spectrum. Damage that will take decades to repair, if ever.
But, if my hypothesis is correct, the alternative explanation would be the opposite of this: the state asserting power over and through monopolies in the common interest, in support of democratic principles, for the common weal. And that I can support.
I don't know that this is the case. I find it curious that I seem to be the only voice suggesting it. Time should tell.
And after this is over, yes, Silicon Valley, in its metonymic sense standing for the US and global tech industry, has to face its monopoly problem, its free speech problem (in both sincere and insincere senses), its surveillance problem (capitalist, state, criminal, rogue actor), its censorship problem, its propaganda problem (mass and computational), its targeted manipulation adtech problem, its trust problem, its identity problem, its truth and disinformation problems, its tax avoidance problem, its political influence problem.
Virtually all of which are inherent aspects of monopoly: "Propaganda, censorship, and surveillance are all attributes of monopoly" https://joindiaspora.com/posts/7bfcf170eefc013863fa002590d8e506
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771470But, speaking as a space alien cat myself, Greenwald is so far off base here he's exited the Galaxy.
Update: 2h30m after posting, NPR have mentioned sealed indictments and speculated on whether the President might be charged, in special coverage.
Late edits: 2022-1-23 Typos: s/inconcert/in concert/; s/would bet he/would be the/;
19 votes -
Thoughts on the difficulties of content moderation, and implications for decentralised communities
12 votes -
Former workers allege YouTube channel GameXplain was exploitative workplace
8 votes -
Pirate Bay founder thinks Parler’s inability to stay online is ‘embarrassing’
16 votes