
Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian's Rosy Outlook On The Future of Politics - pg
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/02/reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanians-rosy-outlook-on-the-future-of-politics/
======
jacques_chester
Ohanian feels the future is rosy because he imagines that internet activism
will continue to be dominated by "our" kind. A few million people at best.

We are absolutely, utterly outnumbered by people unlike "us".

As the tools get better, the difficulty of mounting such campaigns will fall
to the point where there will be massive campaigns to have Congress save soap
operas, ban Brad and Angelina from divorcing and protecting us from mobile
phone towers (the chosen-not-to-interact-with-water radiationz zomg!).

~~~
zavulon
It's the division of people into "us" and "them", and the overwhelming belief
that "we" are right, and "they" are wrong, and evil, is one of the biggest
problems in the world's politics. And it's the biggest thing, out of many,
that's wrong with Reddit.

~~~
rickmb
But of course there is a "them" and their "evil" can be quantified by counting
the numbers of dead bodies, people incarcerated for not conforming and the
number of laws made to simply deny certain people the same rights as everyone
else.

Relativism won't help you when "they" believe you shouldn't exist.

------
jason_shah
The following quote from Alexis resonated with me and cut through a lot of
noise in the debate about social media's effect on politics:

“As the Internet continues to get more clout, we have a very different value
proposition to politicians. Unfortunately, for many politicians running for
office, money dictates so much. And what do they use it for? Advertising,
campaigns, TV commercials. As that medium loses its value, and as things like
YouTube, Reddit and Facebook gain value, you get this wonderful leveling of
the playing field in the political world as well.”

I agree with the basic premise that social networking sites including those he
mentioned are increasing in value (value being defined here as the ability to
influence political opinions, and which candidates to support) relative to
"advertising, campaigns, and TV commercials." He seems to imply (correct me if
wrong) that money dictated access to and control over older media like TV
commercials, whereas today, social networking sites are free for users to
disseminate information, and influence opinion, so money doesn't play as
significant of a role, and people are and will increasingly be influenced by
these more 'democratized' forms of media (i.e. social networking sites).

I think this (i.e. a more democratized playing field for influencing public
opinion) is an improvement to our political system, and I'm glad Alexis is
using such a public platform for clarifying the real effect social media and
the Internet can potentially have on politics.

I still wonder though, will money just shift media and still continue to shape
the debate? Will it mean, in part, that the campaigns that have the best
retargeting technology, most promoted Tweets, best sponsored stories on
Facebook, and the best video ads and branded channels on YouTube will become
the most likely candidates to win elections?

------
martythemaniak
I wonder if Alexis has considered running for office himself? It's plausible
he could be elected senator in California, though probably not on his first
try.

Pressuring congress to do something (and actually achieving it) is great, but
the odds will always be stacked against us as long as there are no people in
congress actually representing us.

~~~
ajju
Senator Ohanian has a nice ring to it. Even "the Senator from Reddit" :)

------
nir
If the mob driven, self absorbed circle jerk of Reddit hints on the future of
politics, I wouldn't call it rosy by any stretch.

~~~
nextparadigms
Still an improvement over the currently media manipulated majority that vote
in elections.

------
fasteddie31003
Hopefully the internet can be the cure for Washington's addiction to
lobbyists/ special interests. Money in politics is tantamount to bribery. This
bribery is a force for economic inequality because with increased money comes
increased power to keep said money. In a democracy people are what are in
power, not special interests view's amplified with money. The internet is the
great democratizer that will come along and raise the voice of the common
people. I am a whole-harted believe in the theory of democracy, not the
perverted idea of democracy, which is the current state of the United States.
If everyone had an equal voice through the internet I'm sure more intelligent
policy would be made that would benefit more people, not just the people at
the top.

------
joelrunyon
I think they missed the biggest thing - feedback loops.

The main thing social media has done is to democratize information so it's
disseminated faster than ever and accessible to more people in more places
than ever before.

So, when a like-minded group of people can agree on something, organize and
instigate change whereas they wouldn't have 1) had the information 2) been
able to organize 3) be effective, nearly as easily without the tools we
currently have at our disposal.

It's the speed of information travel that lets us form and reform opinions as
we get the latest up-to-date information. That factor, by itself, favors
honesty and openness and makes things much, much more difficult to be shady
and dishonest while keeping all your stories straight.

~~~
jacques_chester
It also makes it possible to disseminate misinformation faster and to form
plausible astroturfing efforts at a low cost.

Reddit has hared off after Evil People who upon closer inspection turned out
to be innocent. This is a property of mobs in general, which is _why_ most
western-style liberal democracies have such maddeningly slow and inefficient
designs.

------
tzs
What most of these discussions overlook is that the Internet is like an
amplifier--it boosts the signal _and_ the noise. I'll have more to say on this
analogy below.

NOTE: in the following, I am not saying or intending to imply that there was
anything good about SOPA. I'm just talking about how people acquired their
knowledge of SOPA.

Consider the recent SOPA events. As far as I could see, the vast majority of
people participating in online activism on that issue were not actually
informed. They were there because a few sites told them it was bad. They did
not check up on that and independently verify before jumping on the bandwagon.

There was no qualitative difference here between them, and the people that
were showing up at town halls to complain about "death panels" in the health
care law because some talk radio host or Fox commentator told them that's what
the law had.

You can see a similar thing starting with the EEA (Enemy Expatriation Act).
Here's what it actually does. Right now, there is a law that says that if you
commit any of seven enumerated acts with the intent of relinquishing your
nationality, then you can, if it is proven you voluntarily did the act with
that intent, lose your citizenship.

The EEA adds an eighth item to that list: "engaging in, or purposefully and
materially supporting, hostilities against the United States", and it adds a
definition: "For purposes of this section, the term ‘hostilities’ means any
conflict subject to the laws of war".

This bill is remarkably simple--about 1/2 of a page. The text is here:
<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-3166>

It is modifying 8 USC 1481, which while longer (maybe two pages), is written
in fairly plain language. It looks to me like it is basically closing some
gaps--the existing law seems to have been written for a world where
hostilities against nations came from other nations.

It does not provide a way for your citizenship to be taken, but rather adds
another option by which you can renounce it. (I believe the Supreme Court has
ruled that citizenship cannot be taken as a form of punishment, which is why,
I suspect, the current law is written to have a clear intent requirement).

Yet I've seen at least a dozen posts, that got a lot of up votes, on Reddit
about how this bill will make it so that the government can declare anyone
(such as an OWS protestor) a "terrorist", immediately strip them of
citizenship without trial, and then toss them into indefinite detention under
NDAA.

I'm seeing similar noise about the PCIPA (Protecting Children Against Internet
Pornography Act). If I were to believe the several calls to blackouts and
protests I've seen over that, it requires ISPs to snoop all my web browsing
and record a complete history of every site I visit, and to also spy on all
e-commerce and record the credit card details of every purchase I make, and to
store this information for 18 months, and cough it up to any government agent
who asks without any questions asked or any warrant requirement or probable
cause (and some even say they have to cough all this up to the RIAA and MPAA).

The PCIPA stuff is getting even more traction than the EEA stuff. I've seen
articles in a couple of "real" papers and magazines repeating the stuff about
tracking all the sites you visit and credit card purchases.

As I said at the opening of this comment, the internet is an amplifier, and it
amplifies both the stupid and the smart. However, it is not a linear
amplifier. I think it is more effective at amplifying the stupid. The reason
is that smart people figured out how to communicate with distant smart people
without the internet. The internet has made it more efficient, of course--I
can now get information in minutes that used to require going to a good
university library or finding a place that had free access to things like
Lexis or Westlaw.

A lot of the stupid, however, was fairly isolated before the internet. Perhaps
each town had its small circle of, say, conspiracy nuts, but they were
surrounded by more sane people, and their interaction with outside conspiracy
nuts was through inefficient means, like newsletters, vanity press books, and
the like. This kept the stupid in check. Now, with the internet, no matter how
far out and unlikely your belief, you can find a lot of other people who share
it, and that provide reinforcement.

So, for smart people, the internet was like the jump from hand copied
manuscripts to the printing press. It really boosted the efficiency of
something we were already doing. For stupid, the internet was like the
discovery of fire.

~~~
phreanix
Spot on.

>So, for smart people, the internet was like the jump from hand copied
manuscripts to the printing press. It really boosted the efficiency of
something we were already doing. For stupid, the internet was like the
discovery of fire.

I might add, for stupid, it was discovering the ladder to the pulpit.

The ability of the internet (with the help of supporting
sites/apps/forums/boards of course) to bring together like-minded people has
been amazingly transformative and I'd conjecture, has allowed remarkable and
exponential progress in thousands of different fields, both productive and
stupid.

What I don't think I've seen yet is for a real political movement that started
and proliferated on the internet gain enough traction to see a bill created
then become law. Maybe it's just a matter of time?

------
signalsignal
I suppose it would be inevitable that a site which promotes investment in
Social Media companies would get so heavily involved in politics. If Reddit is
a good example of the Vox populi, then the future we can look forward to is
one of "VOTE UP IF YOU SUPPORT BILL 1780-1X". Mob rule, internet style, will
be the future, given the proper backing by certain VC's and angel investors,
of course.

Much, much better than SOPA.

------
jonbischke
Does anyone else experience the same awesomeness on Forbes:

#1 - Interstitial ad right away.

#2 - Click "skip ad" and redirected to a page that (a) doesn't contain the
article and (b) starts playing an ad with sound.

If there's a major media site with a worse user experience than Forbes, I'd
love to hear of it.

