r/thinktank • u/Delta_Dharma • Mar 02 '21
Discussion Social Media of the Future
Characteristics of the Platform
More open sourced so that all decisions are more transparent and accessible by subscribers. No one group should have complete control over any aspect of the platform focusing rather on decentralization.
It should also play fair with other social mediums by allowing cross platform functionality.
Databases that store this content could be negotiated with group moderators who would bid in a marketplace that sells cloud based storage.
The platform could be similar to square space where you can customize the look and functions of your content with custom or standardized APIs. It should be pretty simplistic at first but over time (as users become more skilled at utilizing it) it can add functionality. The platform would primarily focus it’s profitability on how to make the tools easier to use and more accessible and how to create a marketplace for API tools to compete.
It will be a primarily subscription based platform where interaction with a content creator/group requires a crypto currency payment. For better traceability and less requirement of a formal banking system. Though, traditional payments can still be used with paypal, square, or a similar service.
The more popular a group the higher the cost. The people within the group can upvote and down vote content which costs a small amount of crypto currency (fractions of a penny) the more you contribute the more its relevance moves.
Content creators would get a slice of the pie that they negotiate with the owners of the content group.
Moderators can be contracted so that the spirit of a group can be negotiated ahead of time before launching.
Additionally, bot’s can be used that read comments and moderate them by either upvoting or downvoting comments based on a particular philosophy determined by investors (corporations, crowdfunding, governments, religions, scientific groups, advertisers).
AI will be able to determine things that trigger the philosophy of the AI using GPT-3 like tools to search for characteristics that should be upvoted or downvoted.
Content groups could be responsible for the content that’s created on their group so it’s their responsibility to regulate it with the tools that are integrated into the open source software. They can vote on wether or not certain tools (like crowdsourcing, bots, government involvement, etc) would be permitted.
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u/MeEvilBob Mar 03 '21
I've always liked the idea of having a platform with a built-in voting system which is used to allow all users of the site to vote on any proposed changes rather than leaving it all up to the owners and developers of the site. Rather than having any one individual or group making decisions for the whole site, anyone on the site could submit a change request and everyone on the site would at least have the option to vote on it whether they choose to participate or not.
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u/Delta_Dharma Mar 03 '21
That’s a fantastic idea, luckily with the decentralized model, that can easily be incorporated into the design of the platform. The problem with the current model of social media is that people don’t directly pay for the service and because they don’t pay, their opinions don’t really matter to the decision makers within those platforms.
The way economic systems work is that in order for a market to be affected by certain trends it must be priced into the system. Right now users aren’t directly priced into the system. Instead, they sell user data to profit off of. Over time the platforms are being designed to accrue more of that data by becoming more addictive, by preying on people’s insecurities, and emotions.
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u/Babybaluga1 Mar 03 '21
To your first point: A shareholder controlled company would go a long way towards accountability. Zuckerberg owns a small amount of FB in proportion to the amount he actually controls. This is because he has more votes for each share he owns.