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Comment by hx8 | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame that this is true for many platforms. Social media platforms have the potential to be incredibly democratic. The more people watch content the more it's shown to other people. Anyone's voice could be amplified in a way that was limited to broadcast networking and printing presses in the past. A million small conversations can occur in such a way that they create a chorus of discussion about public interests. Now it seems like most platforms seem to be thinly veiled psyops hoping to trade quick dopamine for mindshare.

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> Social media platforms have the potential to be incredibly democratic.

> Now it seems like most platforms seem to be thinly veiled psyops hoping to trade quick dopamine for mindshare.

It's a matter of incentives. The profit motive is fundamentally opposed to a low-intervention platform for democratic communication. For a brief period we had some social media platforms that made gestures in the direction of free communication. Then the investor capital came rolling in, and they were expected to increase revenue. How do you increase revenue of your free communication platform? You sell the messaging. Call it promotion, advertising, whatever. The only thing of value you have at your disposal are people's eyeball, you're going to sell what they see. You could ask your users to pay for the service... but then 80% of them will flake to a rival service that's still free. If there's a way to marry the profit motive and a truly democratic social media platform then our best and brightest have yet to find it. I suspect it doesn't exist.

> It's a matter of incentives. The profit motive is fundamentally opposed to a low-intervention platform for democratic communication.

Exactly.

It seems the only way to sidestep this growing problem is to create a profit free platform, and view it almost as a utility but is openly owned and controlled by "the people."

The vTaiwan and g0v ("gov zero") projects are relevant starter examples for a newer type of distributed governance:

https://www.stearthinktank.com/post/deconstructing-binary-ci...

That reminds me of the surprising and perverse effects witnessed during the Roman Empire's downward spiral.

One of the reforms was going from citizen soldiers who must provide their own gear to government provided weaponry and armor. Despite on its face being more egalitarian this resulted instead in consolidation of personal power and lead to more stratification. Quartermasters became kingmakers, just like how coups were lead by quartermasters in the Napoleonic era as they controlled food and provided payment.

There must always be an owner and don't trust "the people" to be anything more than a populist's device to assign legitimacy to their supporters and other dissenters.

> There must always be an owner and don't trust "the people" to be anything more than a populist's device to assign legitimacy to their supporters and other dissenters.

That's a false dichotomy, especially in the example of vTaiwan, since it was a creation that operated in parallel with an already existing government.

Basically, the platform itself didn't have any direct political power because at the end of the day it was "just an app" or series of apps.

However, even without official power, its low barrier to public consensus building (that you call populism) enabled an efficient and highly organized form of government critique and accountability. This created a near realtime public awareness of the real world intricacies of problem X, Y, or Z that did not exist previously, and put pressure on the politicians in power to take these conclusions/demands somewhat seriously. It also literally helped them do their jobs better, and was far more responsive and precise than traditional electoral implementations.

> Now it seems like most platforms seem to be thinly veiled psyops hoping to trade quick dopamine for mindshare.

The first step to reform would be to persuade legacy media to stop reporting the opinions trending on X/Twitter as "news". Stop reporting it entirely, it's manipulated, at best unverified, rubbish.

That would require legacy reporters to get out on the streets and do some reporting.

Can you imagine, holding public servants (a president for example) accountable for their statements… practically unheard of in the last decade…

Americans have held all their presidents accountable in the way they deem best according to their values.

It's their legal out against having to research stuff to prevent libel liability. And they can embed social media photos and videos that weren't even from the rights holder to avoid having to clear rights to anything.

This is part of why I think there should exist a popular real-name-only network. It'd go far to prevent these types of attacks on the megaphone.

Isn’t that what Facebook is supposed to provide? From anecdotal evidence, people are happy to engage in vitriol online that they would never do face to face, real name or not.

Heck I’ve seen some nastiness on LinkedIn with people’s government name and employer right next to it.

Real names don’t do much to prevent online assholery.

And to that point LinkedIn makes an active effort (in my experience) to highlight the most extreme political comments (I assume for the same reasons as any other social network- anger is a simple formula to fuel engagement).

It insists on sending me push notifications of the most bizarre conspiracy theories, even after I muted the accounts. Super frustrating when all you want is basically an electronic business card catalog.

1) No, Facebook does not confirm people’s real names

2) This isn’t a solution to vitriol, it’s a solution to inorganic amplification

They absolutely do require confirmation in some cases - https://www.facebook.com/help/1090831264320592

Of course that’s not foolproof and there are millions of bot accounts by facebooks own admission. But at the scale of billions of active users across the globe I’m not sure what approach could be 100%

> in some cases

some != all

therefore, it is not a real-name only network.

I'm not asking for Facebook to become a confirmed real-name only network. I am not asking for anyone to be compelled to supply a confirmed real-name only network.

I am saying: I wish that one existed and caught on with consumers.

I totally get what you’re saying. I just don't know how you actually implement this at global scale. I dislike Facebook and have not used it in over a decade, but I do believe they at least used to try and enforce real name policies.

1) I don't have interest in at global scale

2) I'm not discussing the practicality of it

You mentioned that you want this theoretical social network to “catch on” to consumers. Therefore - it kind of has to be practical to do so.

Doing it practically in the US is relatively trivial. ID.me does exactly that already.

this is the way…

I find absolutely ridiculous every social media / free speech discussion if platform does not have proof of identity. while you and I may have right to free speech the bots etc do not. hence, there is no free speech without proof of identity imo

Of course there is free speech without proof of identity. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects anonymous speech. The right to speak anonymously is fundamental to the right to speak freely.

You haven't proven the identity of "bdangubic" to us yet here you are exercising your right to free speech.

what if I was an AI bot programmed under the direction of President Xi? :)

What if you were? One has to assume most of the "people" with whom one interacts on the internet are bots or AIs now, anyway. That's just the nature of our post-truth reality, it doesn't matter.

The point is that would have no bearing at all on whether or not you would have the right to free speech if you were a person who chose not to reveal your identity.

One has to assume most of the "people" with whom one interacts on the internet are bots or AIs now, anyway. That's just the nature of our post-truth reality, it doesn't matter.

but “people” do not have right to free speech, PEOPLE do. if as you said most interactions on the internet are bots they are not covered by the bill of rights :) identity-proofing would take care of that…

It wouldn't take care of anything, it would just expose people who need anonymity to unnecessary danger.

if you trust social media companies (barf!) you can prove identity and request to stay anonymous. these are not mutually exclusive (of course IF at the beginning of this post is a big IF :) )

You're misreading the argument.

They're not saying people do not have the freedom to speak anonymously, they're saying that computer programs, by virtue of not being a person, do not have freedom of speech under the Constitution.

Obviously you can argue that you have First Amendment protections to write programs that then speak for you, which is essentially where the argument should happen. I think a very reasonable concession is: you can write programs that speak for you, so long as they do not masquerade as another person (real or fake). I.e.: you can write a program that speaks as you, or you can write a program that speaks as a program.

I think anonymity is important for some kind of coordination problems (e.g. against an authoritarian government). A better solution is to have a nominal fee, maybe $10/yr to be platformed, that way it's expensive to bot.

this is solid but if I am China what is $400,000,000 to spend on 40,000,000 bots that now we think are real people…

That's about as much as United States Presidents spend on their campaigns, so it's actually quite a lot. Especially if it gets noticed and shut down.

one candidate alone spent 4x that so it is not even close :)

Yeah I think anonymity is important to have available. But I wish not every single social media platform was trivial to bot.

(GP and I disagree on whether every platform should require it)

Well, the issue with coordination is you need everyone already there to coordinate. If people are only using the network for illegitimate uses, then it will get shut down (think 4chan, Silk Road). Really, it's in the authoritarian government's best interest (not the people's) to make multiple platforms. Most people will choose the free one, so it's 10–100x cheaper to either bot the pay-for-anonymity platform or shut it down when they notice it formenting unrest.

Google+ famously instituted real name policies before it was cool. You used to get banned on Facebook for using a nickname but I think drag queens pushed back, god bless.

(2014) https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/09/28/35...

Why do people insist upon sacrificing anominity and thinking they will get anything in return for it? I could forgive it in the 00s but it is inexcusable in the 20s. Real name policies just causes people to double down more. It has not been a pancaea.

Maybe re-read the comment. No one is insisting on anything. I’m wishing for more optionality.

I blame the Zuck algorithmic feed ruined it all he was my favorite out of all the feudal barons too :(

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