
Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder - lsanger
&quot;Humanity has been contemptuously used by vast digital empires,&quot; says my new &quot;Declaration of Digital Independence&quot; (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larrysanger.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;declaration-of-digital-independence&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larrysanger.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;declaration-of-digital-indep...</a>), which you can sign. So I&#x27;m calling a massive social media strike (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larrysanger.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;social-media-strike&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larrysanger.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;social-media-strike&#x2F;</a>) for July 4-5 to raise awareness of the possibility of decentralizing social media, which in my experience is wildly popular whenever proposed.<p>Read the FAQ (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larrysanger.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;faq-about-the-project-to-decentralize-social-media&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larrysanger.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;faq-about-the-project-to-dec...</a>) and use some collected resources (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larrysanger.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;socialmediastrike-resources&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;larrysanger.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;socialmediastrike-resources&#x2F;</a>) to learn and spread the word far and wide. Look for lots of news about this soon. And get ready! Maybe we can make a long-held geek dream finally come true.
======
yoz-y
I feel that even if everybody who cared went on strike, the difference in
daily visitors would probably be in the error margin.

I think most people who really care have already left the centralised social
media or scaled it down to the point that a non-strike day is an exception.

I do not disagree with the message, but I seriously doubt that this will have
any effect.

~~~
kickscondor
I think there could be some useful purposes for everyone outside of social
media: unifying those people, helping them find each other, mobilizing them to
take community measures. I think it's safe to say that at this point we're not
looking for another social network to replace Facebook or another search
engine to replace Google - we need to start finding ways to work decentralized
but still come together -this is going to come out sounding silly, but - on
the Internet's behalf.

This could be good. Stuff like #deletefacebook was interesting, but it didn't
help people find alternatives. I like that a 'strike' implies group action
together toward some kind of progress.

~~~
Nextgrid
One big issue is that there’s nothing decentralised that currently exists that
can rival the quality & user experience of mainstream social networks, and
decentralisation comes with its own problems (I personally think the problem
with mainstream social media is its ad-based business model and not
centralisation).

Mastodon (which seems to be the biggest alternative being proposed) is still a
joke, even the name and branding sounds awful IMO. And who in their right mind
thought calling a post a “toot”
([https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot))
was a good idea.

Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own issues like the lack
of network-wide content moderation and agreement on what content is
acceptable. There are solutions (more like hacks) around this where instance
admins can choose not to federate with instances they don’t like the policies
of, but it then causes problems for end-users where they can’t communicate
with their peers on those banned instances despite _all_ of them being _on
Mastodon_. Good luck explaining to a non-technical person why they can’t talk
to/see the posts of certain people despite them all being on Mastodon, and the
solution is to spend time choosing an instance with policies you agree with
_and_ making sure your friends are on it or on a similar instance that’s not
banned by yours, and then hoping the instances stay online without any kind of
funding (there’s also no knowledge of whether they would scale to the size of
mainstream social networks).

The solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The
main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social
media. The solution would be to vote with your wallets and fund a better
Facebook alternative - it could even show the current social networks that
there’s profit to be made treating their users with respect and make the
situation better for everyone else too.

~~~
r3bl
I agree with you all the way until the middle of your third paragraph.

You're not gonna suggest Mastodon to someone, you're gonna point to a specific
community (probably the same one you're a member of). Only one set of rules
you need to worry about. Federation? You don't have to pay attention to it at
all. It's a nice feature to have for sure, but it only becomes relevant once
you don't have people to follow inside of your own instance. By recommending
an instance, you're recommending a community, not the software behind that
community.

There have been plenty of attempts of taking Facebook's crown (both VC-funded
and user-funded), and they've all failed spectacularly. The reason for that is
simple: people don't want a global network. Facebook was the first and last
one to succeed. Nobody wants to be on the same network as their parents, so
they indeed decentralize: they decentralize in group chats, Facebook groups,
Discord servers, Slack servers, Twitter communities, Discourse instances,
Mastodon instances, forums like HN, subreddits etc. Facebook and Google+
failed immediately simply by having a real-name policy. That's okay if you
want to communicate with people around you, but terrible if you want to truly
express yourself to a bunch of strangers. The younger you are, the bigger the
odds that you belong in the latter. Nothing wrong with communicating with
people around you, but that's not the group that drives your numbers up
drastically.

Mastodon surely can't be the new Facebook simply because that's not what it
aims to become. It aims to become the software of choice for the communities.
The easier you make it to jump on board (and the less personal data you need
to provide in order to do so), the bigger the odds that you'll be the home for
a community.

~~~
Nextgrid
I am not sure that being a global network is a problem.

Instagram is a global network and seems to be doing fine (although the quality
of the content has now declined).

Personally, a global network is what I want. I already have the solutions you
mention (group chats, Slack/Discord instances, forums, etc) for specific
communities. What’s missing is something like Facebook or Instagram where
everyone is on it and I can just “add” them and get updates about them every
so often.

If anything, the per-community problem is already solved thanks to Discourse,
Slack/Discord, Reddit, group chats, etc. But a global network is what’s
missing.

~~~
r3bl
You don't jump from nothing to a global network. You host tangentially-related
communities in the middle. The more of them you host, the bigger your overall
numbers are.

Instagram succeeded for that same reason: profiles set to private, no real
name policy, people can't look you up in a search bar. It was easier to group
up in small communities. The less that's the case, the crappier the content.
Instagram was ruined the moment Facebook accounts were attached to Instagram
accounts — it's just dying slowly, the same way Facebook is dying slowly.

The next "global" platform is going to be Discord. It started as a place to
host gaming communities. People were subscribed to a few gaming communities,
so it already made sense for them to join more communities that are available
on the platform. Right now, it's no longer the place exclusively for gaming.
Every subreddit has one, every Patreon supporter is a member of some secret
one. It'll outlast both Instagram and Facebook for one reason only: no
personal info what so ever. People can't find out anything about you by
clicking on your username: not your real name, not your contact info, not even
a list of other communities you are a part of. You join a community by being
invited to one.

~~~
jakear
To me, Discord is just a partial implementation of Slack. What does it have
that Slack doesn’t?

~~~
r3bl
Feature-wise, pretty much nothing, it's just targeting a different set of
users. Slack started as a solution for companies and pretty much stayed there,
Discord started as a solution for gamers and expanded from there.

Slack is Discord for adults, but adults are never the ones who make or break
social media. It's younger people who tend to be more invested in the platform
they use. It's not a rational choice (nor was Facebook for my generation), but
it got kickstarted out of necessity (as a substitute to the limited chat
options within games) and right now, it's the convenience that drives it
further. Why switch over when, unlike Facebook or Slack, everyone you know is
already using Discord?

~~~
AJ007
So basically what we need is Discord/Slack, but as an open protocol.

The entire concept of having a gigantic centralized social network on top of a
gigantic decentralized communication platform (the internet) seems like a bit
of an anti-pattern to me. Email, Usenet, and IRC seem to have never gotten the
successors they deserved. Centralized, closed, and operates by a for-profit
organization does not count.

As a side note I’m surprised there isn’t more mention of message boards here.
Their peak seems to have been 2001-2010 and then their importance faded. One
can discuss the shortcomings of phpBB and vBulletin at length, but their basic
function seemed to have worked extremely well.

------
Zenst
What is social media!

I'm sure many class this very forum as their social outlet media wise. For
some, wiki itself has become a social media outlet.

But strikes upon social media which will involve less than 1% of users will
gain no traction, hardly a blip.

Wouldn't it of been better than instead of a strike that they had a statement
with a hashtag that all those striking people posted that day and that was
all. That would get traction. The fawning lazy news media who slurp up
hashtags as a metric and source for news would pick up upon it. It would grow
like a snowball down a snowy hill. The strike approach, given how few in
relation to the social media user-base that this will appeal. Would be like a
snowball rolling down a hot summer mountain. Nobody will know, apart from
those who was there at the start, no traction, no momentum and more so. No
sign that it ever happened upon those social media platforms in a noticeable
way at all.

Hence, I totally appreciate the sentiment, just mindful that the message will
be lost with this approach, as it has been lost previously by such actions
upon the likes of facebook, twitter and ....that's it as far as the World
media counts for its news.

FWIW, I don't do twitter anymore, never done facebook and Google+ striked all
its users. Hence for me and many others, creating a social media account just
to take part by not posting, would play against the intent and into social
media hands. But I certainly wish them luck. Though equally, I would not be
supprised if a decentralised social media platform suddenly sprung up from
wiki origins. But then, the inner cynic in me is very strong in today's
digital world.

EDIT ADD Had a quick look for `related` interests and see that he is CIO of
Everipedia, which is decentralizing encyclopedia writing from an article in
March: [https://www.wired.com/story/larry-sanger-declaration-of-
digi...](https://www.wired.com/story/larry-sanger-declaration-of-digital-
independence/) But I'd not cry foul even if they did produce their own
decentralised social media platform; Kinda hope they do actually. Competition
does have its upsides.

~~~
rexpop
> Wouldn't it [have] been better than instead of a strike that they had a
> statement with a hashtag that all those striking people posted that day and
> that was all.

This is, in essence, how the action will go down.

------
3xblah
Interesting how he chose the word "strike", commonly used to refer to workers,
as if to imply users are working for Facebook or Twitter.

Every time a user submits something to them, it is arguable she is doing work
for those companies. The companies do not produce content, yet they depend on
it in order to draw traffic. What they provide is a centralised distribution
channel. They rely on users to do the work of producing/submitting content.

~~~
SamuelAdams
That's one of the amazing things about social media. It has the largest unpaid
workforce in history - bigger even than the slave trade. Companies aren't
getting billions of dollars in stock valuations because of their 50 or so
really smart employees: they're getting billions because of their user's data,
and their users willingness to continuously cultivate and update that data.

That's what makes Facebook data so valuable: it's up to date and it's very
detailed, all thanks to the billions of people who contribute to it.

------
tickerticker
Is HN a form of social media?

~~~
espeed
Yes. HN is a form of social media -- it's a social media exemplar -- the
exception that proves it's possible to have an open system for high-quality
public discourse, even if such a system is hard to establish and even harder
to maintain.

Paul Graham has said, "he hopes to avoid the Eternal September that results in
the general decline of intelligent discourse within a community" [1]. Hacker
News launched 12 years ago in 2007, it's a testament to Graham, the
moderators, the algorithms behind it, and the community members that HN has
been able to keep its system for high quality intelligent discourse from
devolving over time.

If HN doesn't resemble most other social media systems -- so much so that
people have to ask -- this is why. Establishing such a system is hard to do,
and even harder to maintain. So far HN has been an exception, not the rule.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News)

~~~
F-0X
Strong disagree. HN is not a social media. Because we do not use it for social
purposes. This site has no concept of user relationships, and it does not
encourage you to use real/identifying information about yourself to use it. It
is centred on topics and discussion - sites like this, Reddit, and other
forums can develop social networks, but this is a byproduct and not the
intent, which I think is the single most important factor. HN's purpose is not
to keep you in touch with your friends or community, thus it is not a social
media.

~~~
espeed
Where are you getting your definition for social media?

Wikipedia defines social media as [1]:

    
    
      Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies 
      that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, 
      ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via 
      virtual communities and networks.
    

I don't know if there's an "official" agreed upon definition somewhere, but I
do know this: The definition of what social media is and what it will become
is not yet known -- it will continue to evolve as the Internet evolves and as
our understanding evolves closer to true -- but at its core, I would say
social media is technology that enables bidirectional public communication
among people whereas mass media [2] enables unidirectional public
communication -- one to many broadcasts to people -- with no direct feedback
loop.

The Internet provided the foundational infrastructure and was the prerequisite
layer that made social media interaction possible. What we do with social
media -- how we use it, build upon it, and optimize for it -- is yet to be
determined.

For example, who would have envisioned the mobile phone as we use it today
when the telephone was invented. Phones aren't just used for phone calls
anymore. The iPhone changed that, but the iPhone couldn't exist in its present
form until the foundation for the Internet infrastructure was laid. Today our
vision of the Internet is not what it was when it was invented. It continues
to evolve, as does its uses and definition. Social media will be like that too
-- it's part of the next layer to build upon, and we're still learning what
that is -- its definition is still being formed, and its optimal form is still
to come.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media)

~~~
z3phyr
By this definition, the internet itself is a social media?

~~~
sbmthakur
Do you mean the World Wide Web? The Internet also consists of devices like
routers.

~~~
z3phyr
More than WWW. There is a lot of content on the on the internet not served by
hypertext markup in a web browser.

------
Karrot_Kream
I feel like most folks haven't read either link. The strike calls for striking
against traditional, centralized social media, _not_ other social media (such
as the Fediverse).

~~~
tastroder
Where's the difference? Nobody (tm) is using the latter anyway.

The best example of something decentralised, that is/was actually used, in the
linked FAQ seems to be RSS/Atom. In the age of medium, aggregators like
iTunes/Spotify and whatnot, that doesn't seem like something that's on a
rising slope either. Despite the Twitter conversation in there I'd be hard
pressed to see any incentive for this type of corporation to embrace openness
when their current alternative is more lucrative.

Even if this strike gains momentum in the tech-savvy niche it's unlikely to
even be noticed by regular users or even the non-tech influencers those people
follow. It lacks an immediately actionable goal and common incentive. Another
open standard, another decentralised social $X, that's not something that
drives a critical mass away from any of these platforms. The platforms also
have enough money to just buy up new players and continue their current
paradigm.

I like the rules put forward by that decentralisation manifesto, I'm just not
sure the general public cares or can care. A general user today likely didn't
experience the internet as a set of communities. The experience is, imho, one
of commercial interests that drives the masses, which drowns any visible
incentive a regular user might gain from the technical approach this movement
suggests.

------
buboard
This is laudable as a way to draw attention to the decentralized media. This
is not the typical "social media is bad for you get away". Of course i very
much doubt it will work. The best way to make decentralized systems work, is
to kick a lot of smart people outside corporate media. Smart people will
improve the decentralized platforms and influence others to use them. It will
be sort of like what happened with the birth of Bitcoin.

I think we should be asking for swift regulation and more censorship on
corporate media. It is the kind of thing that really puts off smart people,
and will push those early adopters to use the decentranet.

Is there a reddit-like decentralized alternative?

------
0x8BADF00D
It never held any power over me. I was always skeptical of it from the start.
That’s why it is hard to imagine something like a social media strike. For
many of us it has no power over our minds.

~~~
buboard
Doesn't HN count as social media?

~~~
welly
It's a forum.

~~~
buboard
with karma. and a lot of groupthink. surely it doesnt compare to the dross u
see on facebook, but HN , reddit and twitter are on a similar level of
socialmedia-ness to me

------
jdoliner
The social media strike, as organized on Hacker News, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
I honestly don't think people have much interest in striking these days if
they can't post it on social media, but maybe this will have legs. It's a
little telling though that this really can't be organized any other way
besides social media these days, and I suspect there will be a lot of people
throughout those 2 days checking in on social media to see how it's going.

~~~
kickscondor
This is already happening to some degree - like I wonder what percentage of
Twitter messaging is now complaining about Twitter. Yes, this could just
generate some small increase in traffic for the day - but that's an acceptable
short-term concession if it means the centralized social networks could go
away in the long-term.

------
idlewords
This strike does not seem very well thought through.

In an action of this kind, you want to demonstrate organization, capacity, and
that you have real numbers behind you. Having people silently not use the
internet on a major U.S. holiday achieves none of that.

If the goal is to get people to share the hashtag, then that should be the
focus of the action.

A failed strike is much worse than not striking at all. But frankly, this
seems more like a vanity effort than a serious attempt at change.

~~~
dmix
Sounds like competiting versions of slacktivism to me.

~~~
idlewords
Slacktivism is a word people even lazier than the slacktivists use to describe
small attempts at change. As a lazy guy myself, I'd lift my glass to you if it
wasn't all the way over there.

~~~
dmix
Sorry the idea about being another person acting outraged on Twitter about
something makes me cringe.

I'd rather spend my time building decentralized alternatives to those
products. Which is what I'm doing in my spare time.

We, the developers and startup peoples, are the ones who can do something real
about it.

------
abootstrapper
Strike accepted. I deleted my social media accounts in 2016.

~~~
rch
Including WhatsApp?

~~~
abootstrapper
Yarp.

------
adamlangsner
I love this. Ironically, a great way to spread the word is via social media.

~~~
growtofill
That’s the point. Advertise the hazards of smoking in the places where people
smoke.

~~~
murat124
By smoking it.

~~~
growtofill
Otherwise you are subjective to survivorship bias: if people were silently
quitting social media the ones who remain wouldn’t be aware there’s anything
wrong with those social media.

~~~
murat124
I agree but the ones who remain don't care.

------
changoplatanero
This reminds me of the campaign to get people to give up shopping on the day
after thanksgiving. Not gonna happen.

~~~
pishpash
Because of game theory and money is involved and enough people have been
coopted.

~~~
klez
It seems to me all of that applies (in different ways, I would concede) to
social media as well.

------
braindead_in
I fully support it. Hopefully it will not become a social media event and lead
to more consumption.

------
cheez
[https://larrysanger.org/2019/06/declaration-of-digital-
indep...](https://larrysanger.org/2019/06/declaration-of-digital-independence)

------
quickthrower2
I'll see your Social Media strike and raise you an Internet strike.

------
negamax
Why not do a no Internet day? Will be easier to communicate that. Give people
a taste of normal life. They will automatically quit on social media. Like
every Sunday no Internet day.

~~~
iliketosleep
That actually would have been a great idea, in hindsight. I have seen far to
many people who suffer from intense anxiety if they have no internet or device
access, even if it's just for a few hours. It's like a form of addiction. A
day away from the Internet each week would condition people to be able to
survive without it.

~~~
greendestiny_re
I just spent seven days with only a limited data plan. I felt like time slowed
down to a crawl and I was able to do much more than on a regular day with the
internet.

~~~
cameronbrown
I've cut down to a 2GB plan for this reason. Initially I was just switching
networks but I stuck with it because of how much better I felt. Being more
data conscious made me realise how much time I was wasting. I used to consume
2-3 times more data and now I don't even hit my cap anymore.

------
malloreon
This will have zero effect. If you take any kind of public transportation,
even glancing across peoples' screens as you sit down (and ~everyone'll be
looking at a screen), 95% will be on fb or instagram.

I wish it were different, but by now these apps, and all social media, are
extremely good at feeding their users' addictions.

------
anonytrary
Social media is hard to define so participants are more likely to cheat.
Should be an internet strike which is "as simple as" going camping without
your phones/computers for 2 days, which honestly would be great practice for a
newly decentralized world.

------
nikhildahake
I created Timelines - a social network that allows people to own their data.

Timelines stores your data in a specific folder on your Google Drive which is
sandboxed from all your other data on Google drive.

Check it out!

[https://www.timelines.co](https://www.timelines.co)

~~~
stonogo
You own your data by uploading it directly to Google servers?

~~~
nikhildahake
It is in a sand boxed environment on Google drive. This is more of a proof of
concept. I could potentially develop this further by:

1)Giving the user an option of where they would want to store the data e.g.
S3, box, dropbox etc. 2)Encrypt the data before sending it to google servers.

------
camdenlock
Eh? There already are decentralized social networks available to use. This
doesn’t add up.

And as others have pointed out, what networks are eligible for this forced
decentralization process? Should some networks be allowed to be centralized?
Which ones, if so?

Let’s not be too hasty.

~~~
r3bl
> Eh? There already are decentralized social networks available to use. This
> doesn’t add up.

I agree. They've always existed in one form or the other, it's just that
nobody gave a fuck. Mastodon kinda changed that by attracting about half a
million monthly users. A tiny, tiny number for a social network, but a
gigantic number for a _decentralized_ social network.

This website is good for the overview of the "fediverse" (collection of social
media services talking together via open protocols): [https://the-
federation.info/](https://the-federation.info/)

Hell, name a social network, and I can name at least one attempt at
decentralizing it: Twitter (Mastodon, Pleroma), Instagram (PixelFed, Anfora),
reddit (Lemmy), YouTube (PeerTube), SoundCloud (Funkwhale), Medium (Write.as)
etc. An obvious one that I haven't listed is Facebook, but that thing has so
many features that a viable alternative heavily depends on which Facebook
features you actually use.

I see nothing wrong with this strike, but I don't see how spreading awareness
helps if you don't point to the most obvious solution available.

------
amelius
Perhaps an idea to make a substitute profile pic that people can use to show
they are in.

By the way, July 4-5 (before the weekend) seems unfortunate timing because
many people will want to check for events.

------
adamlangsner
I’m running ads on Instagram right now. Might be fun to pause my campaign for
2 days in addition to not using social media personally

------
ilaksh
What about decentralizing the Wikipedia empire?

~~~
duskwuff
Sanger hasn't been involved with Wikipedia since 2002. Calling him the
"Wikipedia cofounder" is, at this point, a little misleading.

------
bartimus
The only way this is going to move forward is through open standards.
Something something webfinger, mail 2.0 and trusted recipients.

------
ekianjo
What would you achieve with a 2 days strike anyway? The idea is so ridiculous
in itself it's not even worth writing about.

~~~
buboard
The goal is to promote decentralized media, not to get people off of them.

------
RickJWagner
social media strike on July 4th?

I'm betting Facebook has a huge spike. The people I know on Facebook:

\- Aren't going to know about the strike

\- Won't be able to resist posting gratuitous food-fest pics

------
quietthrow
This is an awesome idea

------
idointernet
I'd be willing to close all of my accounts instead

------
gfodor
For decentralized social media to happen, there needs to be sufficient motive
to leave centralized platforms collectively within a cohesive _network_ of
individuals, so that if a tipping point is met to overcome activation costs,
most of the network will move over so the new decentralized platform has
similar value to the old centralized platform that the network was previously
on. A few incentivized individuals in a wider network of apathetics won't work
-- it needs to be a cohesive network all switching together in order for the
value to remain competitive with the old platform, due to Metcalfe's law. And
since we're talking about decentralization, the network transitioning will
ideally be incentivized to choose a decentralized network to migrate to, vs
another centralized one (even though the usability and quality of experience
on the decentralized one is likely to be inferior.) This combination of
factors is what makes it so difficult to bootstrap these networks.

Here's the thing: there is such an opportunity now, if anyone is willing to
take it. Conservatives in the US are outraged against perceived censorship and
de-platforming by centralized social media platforms. Regardless of the
validity, there's a deep seated hatred of these platforms forming and an
incredible sense of urgency to move elsewhere. Since the motivation for
leaving is overcoming centralized control, this audience is particularly
attracted to accepting decentralized platforms. Given that approximately half
of the US aligns partially with the views of some of these voices, this is a
large potential network. The catch is that we are also living in an era where
if someone develops and delivers such a solution for this market, they're
going to be under vicious attack and be labelled as sympathizers to the
extremist, minority voices of that audience. Most likely their careers will be
destroyed by choosing to build for such an audience, regardless of how much
the extremist voices are actually present on the decentralized platform.

I predict that if we are ever going to see a decentralized social media
platform emerge for any of these services, it will begin with a critical mass
of marginalized voices who have been censored and de-platformed, and their
audience, moving to it. Instead of beginning as a "toy", it will begin as a
"place for undesirables." Today that could mean conservative voices in the US,
tomorrow it could mean something else. If the network is able to garner
sufficient growth, over time, as it always goes, the nature of the "average
user" will be diluted away so the network is no longer perceived as a
community of like-minded individuals but instead as a general, global
platform. (Similar how most mainstream global social network sites today began
in a similar way: Twitter was for techies, Facebook was for college kids,
etc.)

Look out for these leading edge behaviors, and don't just dismiss them if the
early adopter audience has the perception of being unsavory to you. It seems
somewhat inductive that, given the current existence of the global centralized
platforms, any long-run successful decentralized platform likely could not
start any other way than with groups of people who both want to leave
collectively, and who will get no benefit from staying (in other words, the
people on centralized platforms will all want them to leave too.)

------
kodz4
This is great. Celebs need to be on boarded more than Geeks. Getting an Obama
or Kim Kardashian to show support would have major global impact. A cascade
would start.

~~~
mkbkn
Kim Kardashian's business thrives on "media" and social media. Why would she
be on it?

~~~
kodz4
Cause maybe she is tired of the routine. Has made enough money and is watching
the effect its having on kids. There are thousands of reasons, because there
are so many different unintended effects social media has.

~~~
luckylion
> Cause maybe she is tired of the routine. Has made enough money and is
> watching the effect its having on kids.

Yeah, maybe Zuckerberg is tired of the routine as well and both of them don't
want more money and more power.

But probably not.

------
gtfratteus
Is not email and SMS already a decentralized form of social media?

I doubt the existence of decentralized social media would mean the end of
centralized social media. How do you build a video sharing platform that's
anywhere near as full-featured as Youtube without centralization?

------
will_brown
Here is a suggestion for the strike as well...launch a decentralized anti-
libra coin.

~~~
keithtom
It’s called DAI by makerDAO

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bubblewrap
There are already options for decentralized social media. So clearly the
majority of people is not in favor of using them, or they would simply do so
(without a strike).

Therefore, this is about a minority trying to force the majority of people to
adapt to their preferences.

I can not sympathize with such a cause, even though I personally would prefer
decentralized solutions.

It reminds me of the town that voted to ban Amazon - when they could just have
shopped locally to begin with. Weird, really.

~~~
gilcardenas
I think you're oversimplifying people.

Lots of people want to lose weight while also loving the taste of delicious
food that makes them gain weight. Same with smoking, drinking, recycling, etc.

It really comes down to the cost on people to do something.

If your building didn't provide a recycling bin, you probably wouldn't take
the trouble to take all your recycling to a recycling facility.

If none of your friends used social media, chances are you wouldn't either.

~~~
bubblewrap
Decentralized Social Media already exists, like the recycling bins at our
apartment complex.

The problem is the network effect. But then who are the protestors protesting
to? They should protest to their friends to switch over to decentralized SM.
Maybe they are just not important enough to have their friends follow them to
better services?

Instead of going on a strike, why not evangelize those solutions to your
friends?

As for losing weight: it is true that sometimes people like to have their
hands forced. It is called an Ulysses contract, from Ulysses tying himself to
the mast so that he couldn't jump into the sea to follow the sirens.

Calling for the government in the case of Social Media seems way overblown,
though. There are no health issues involved like with unhealthy food. And for
unhealthy food, people make those choices by buying smaller packages or using
different shops. Arguably not really a case for government intervention,
either.

