Resilient social media post

Notes towards a blog post.

This is an early draft: I am publishing this using the permanent versions pattern - where I publish a string of versions as I develop my thoughts - because I'm hoping constructive reactions to early drafts like these will help me answer my questions and so finish the post. Links to the latest and previous versions, if any, are in the footer.

prompt brainstorm

In frame 1, we see a picture entitled "Today's social media: trapped with trolls". A small number of gigantic monoliths stand separately in a barren desert. Within these monoliths are trapped users, trolls, bots and lunatics. The whole thing is toxic and foul smelling.

Switch to a different picture: "Resilient social networks". This is a set of intersecting circles, each corresponding to a certain form of social media: microblogging, blogging, events, streaming, etc.

Inside each circle are multiple lexicons, and for each lexicon, multiple apps. Some lexicons lie in the overlap between two or even three circles. Moreover, different apps seamlessly interoperate with others, forming a network of apps working together to carry conversations across different forms.

And around the outside of these circles are:

• data stores, where users can store their content.
• the users themselves, with their identities. Each user has one identity, which they control, and which they can use to access all of the apps
• Users can also move their content from one data store to another, without losing any content or connections.
• Moreover users can access multiple algorithms for each app, and use multiple moderation systems which work across all the apps - these are provided by other companies, allowing the user to flip between them depending on their needs interests and tastes.

This is what resilience looks like:

• no single point of failure, noone too large to fail, or too integrated to regulate,
• healthy, innovation-based competition between companies who must serve their audiences well or lose them, because users are free to go where they please.

This is the market we could have. Europe has a good track record of creating thriving markets from barren monopolistic wastelands. But the key thing to remember is that this is not a European market - it's a global one, with global opportunities.

gemini images

full conversation: https://gemini.google.com/share/04a592af5851

best bits

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Now let's build up what a resilient social media world looks like:

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lines drawn between different pairs of app icons to illustrate their interoperability. !

showing data stores arrayed around the outside of the circles, representing where users can store their content

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a single icon representing a person, placed outside the ellipses and circles, and connected to one of the data stores where their content is stored.

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three more people icons,connected to a different data store for their content.

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Now let's turn this into a 3D image. The users and data stores are floating above and below a glass surface, upon which are drawn the circles, ellipses, apps and everything else.

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lines linking each user to their nearest data store, illustrating where they store their content.

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Now show that each user has one identity which they can use to access all the apps

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And now show that each app interoperates with several others, in different circles and ellipses

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Revision Notes

This is one of this wiki's pages managed with the permanent versions pattern described in  Two wiki authors and a blogger walk into a bar…

• version control
  • this is version: 1
  • this is the current version: Building resilient social media
  • here is the previous version: n/a