Jack Dorsey interview on the problems with Big Tech social media
Really interesting insights into the beginnings of Twitter, and why any company running a centralised social network can be a problem.
Investors/VCs = profits = permissions needed ≠ open protocols. He covers the cycle of how new profit based ventures want to lure in as many users as possible, and then close the taps and squeeze out as much profit as they can.
As much as a profit corporation (or public benefit corporation) wants to do what is right for the Internet, the problem is their loyalty to shareholders/investors comes first.
Jack explains the why's of this quite well in the interview, and the solution he sees is to have open protocols and permissionless access, as this would prevent many platforms from being able to take decisions that cause greater harm than good.
The drive toward open standards was undertaken for much the same reason when it comes to all sorts of standards, whether they be document standards, units of measure, USB interfaces, tyre sizes, etc. Open standards promote interconnectivity, more competition, less vendor lock-in, etc. All of these benefits users and consumers.
It is the same with social networks. A centralised social network is easy to target for censorship, managing permissions for access, government control, etc.
Unfortunately centralised networks with centralised control and investors/VCs, means money to advertise, create great looking user interfaces, to influence politicians and media organisations, etc to use them. But these could still play a role with open protocols and permissionless access, where they channel that money into the influencing and great UI, but still compete openly using open protocols. Users can choose to use their app or service, but they won't be locked into it.
Everything could change tomorrow if all users demanded only open protocols and permissionless access (both already exist with networks like Nostr, Secure Scuttlebutt, and others which do not require registering for an account on any server). Certainly, any social network would have to then follow the users... but that will never happen as that is not how users think or act in the real world.
One way would be for governments to enact laws that only open protocols are allowed to be used, but that also won't happen in practice. We've seen many governments enact regulations that bound them to only using open document standards, and then they continued to use .docx formats.
So it is quite clear that we know technically would be the best way forward, we also know those solutions actually exist, but how to move the masses to them to create a tipping point... Big unknown!
So where we sit right now is, many users have already opted to go the way of open protocols and permissionless access, and although these networks are flourishing in their own right, they do not represent anything close to a tipping point of change.
Part of the challenge may be that these are all separate networks (you need to choose one or more to use) and there is no network of networks (a single protocol to rule the interoperability between all networks). But despite that, the foundations are laid, and fundamental to that is that a user owns and controls their profile. No-one can take away or ban you from using your profile on Nostr, Secure Scuttlebutt, and similar networks.
I'm hoping the Revolution.Social podcast series will start to create greater awareness around this challenge, and try to establish a greater global consensus around moving towards a new tipping point for creating a protocol to rule them all, owned by no-one, but used by all. That also needs to mean that your profile is portable enough to be used everywhere, and not be locked into a single network.
But listen to episode one of this podcast to understand why this is needed and to understand why any corporation running a centralised social network, is never going to be in the interests of its users or the Internet at large.
See
revolution.social - A Podcast About the Social Media Revolution
Join us as we explore the social media revolution and how we can build an open world for all.
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