
Social media and the concentration of power - arnocaj
https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2019/03/blog-brandes-social-media.html
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franky47
Any centralization of power, at large enough a scale, will escalate to such
problems, it's not limited to social media.

One tech field where this kind of centralization is now at similar levels with
social media is cloud computing, where a handful of giant actors (AWS, Azure,
GCE) hold 99% of the market, providing cheap solutions at the hidden cost of
an increased centralization of power.

I believe the paradigm shift on social media cannot operate on the application
layer if it is not also met with a similar paradigm shift on the platform
layer, otherwise it will only transfer this power to hidden entities.
Decentralization is becoming more than a buzzword, especially with net
neutrality under assault.

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zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> providing cheap solutions

Wut?

I mean, otherwise yout point still stands, and I agree, but I think it's even
stranger with "cloud" stuff, in that it's very much not cheap.

~~~
scottshepard
Cheaper than building your own datacenter, or buying your own server space and
paying a dedicated engineering team to monitor a cluster for you. I can do
things on my own or with a small team that would be well out of my reach
without AWS or GCE.

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skybrian
The funny thing is that when it comes to governing online discussions, it
seems like hardly anyone wants power? We would rather that someone else handle
the tough calls about spam prevention, moderation, and abuse. This then gets
handled partly automatically, but mostly outsourced to large teams of workers.

We are unlikely to see a large-scale movement towards self-reliance by users,
or any government in the U.S. or Europe taking this on directly. Instead they
will penalize companies until they do it.

So the companies that got big are ending up with the governance job because
nobody else wants it. Mostly they started with semi-libertarian philosophies
until they found that social media does not work that way and someone needs to
handle the filth. And a lot of companies that started out with online forums
(like newspapers) decided that it's not worth it and shut down their forums,
so there are fewer players.

This makes it convenient for scapegoating. We can blame the big tech companies
when they get it wrong, because we don't want to do the work ourselves.

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phoe-krk
_> it seems like hardly anyone wants power_

It's a little bit more complex. Everyone wants the profit, no one wants the
liability. Everyone wants data they can sell to advertisers, no one wants
responsibility for handling it.

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arnocaj
Who would be the right people to initiate a paradigm shift? Celebrities?
Influencers?

I think the governments have to enforce an open standard which would allow
intercompatibility between different social networks.

~~~
tathougies
Open standards are unenforceable. It's obvious what would happen: although the
standard is 'open', most people would still continue to use exactly one
provider. Perhaps it won't be facebook, and perhaps -- in the time it takes to
recentralize -- there will be social media nirvana, but ultimately, the nature
of the web means we will -- in the end -- see the emergence of a singular
central player.

Sure, some die-hards would continue to use the smaller ones, but most people
would sign up on the biggest.

