I tend to agree with this article: we all should be worried about being dependent on having only a few core systems where speech happens, especially when network effect & switching costs are very very high.
I believe platforms have the right to moderate themselves as they see fit. They get that freedom, and we're better for letting private systems regulate themselves. Or, (as mentioned) as Twitter is floating, creating an “app store for moderation”, making moderation an interoperable layer rather than integrated.
And I agree with where Cory eventually brings the discussion to: what makes everything all feel so impossible is that switching costs are astronomical. If we leave the one network our friend is on we lose all digital connection with that friend, lose the view we'd get of them interacting with others. Competitive Compatibility is needed, to let us allow private companies to create their own rules, but to not keep each of us restrained & restricted within a handful of supersized networks.
One amusing possibility about this approach is that if Twitter implemented it and governments decided that they didn't like Twitter's default censorship regime, Twitter could say "That's fine, just provide your own censorship system and write a law forcing that system onto all users in your country."
I suspect at least some governments would be reluctant to incur the financial and political costs of maintaining their own (inevitably imperfect and controversial) censorship regime, and would then find it harder to act at arms length and say "Twitter has to do more" as they do currently.
"Hey man, I really enjoy our friendship but I just can't do Facebook anymore for mental health reasons, what's your email?"
What people are really saying is they know it's bad but can't stop, they can't turn away, they can't say "no, I don't want to participate anymore." Then they blame their friends, "oh I'm just going where they go." I wouldn't want to "lose all digital connection with this person" well why not reach out to them?
Said another way, if your friends and you don't maintain connections regardless of the underlying social systems, are you really friends? I've somehow carted a group of random online people along with me across various networks, fragmenting messengers, good old email, phone numbers, going in and out of contact since at least 2002. The underlying protocols might change but they're the same people. What prevents you from doing this?
Your friend is actively broadcasting to the world (except you) their photos, they're sharing articles & their opinion, they're writing on other friend's wall (and you can see). Social places are filled with activity. They are broadcast mediums that beget further broadcast interactions, which beget yet more broadcast interaction.
This cruel small hearted tough-love view of social you present reads as extremely unempathic to me. I don't see how you can miss so clearly the core idea of Metcalf's law, that the value of a network rises according to the square of it's nodes. And each interactable interaction, in my view, constitutes it's own node, is it's own potential for something new to start amid the network. Not being in that place can be enormously detrimental, and imo, Competitive Compatibility is absolutely an obvious, sensible public policy to insure that you can still be with your friend, even if you don't want to be with Facebook.
Reducing this to "why don't you stay in better touch" is like, "oh you don't speak the same language, why don't you two invent one?".
Why does any part of this need to happen in public? Not in a text group? Random discord server? Is it just some sort of underlying exhibition drive that Myspace originally tapped into? To me, my friends are the 15-20 people I've grown to know and like. From reading what you said here, it seems as though to you the word friends captures your entire extended network, with friends of friends, old coworkers, etc. If your question is how do you show off to these people, if you're optimizing for the number of 'interactable interactions' or something, we've left friendship far behind and turned this into a 'numbers go up' game. I'm not less friendly with my best friend because I didn't see her latest comment on some random meme an acquaintance from school 10 years ago posted.
You propose replacing public commons with something different, immediately showing you have gained no sense of what Metcalf's Law implies or what value social networks enable.
None of this sounds in any way realistic or like a viable replacement for what we are right now stuck with. Giving people broadcast, in public capabilities is different, it's easier. I wouldn't necessarily say it's better, but the ease & ambience of broadcast is a huge advantage, and leads to far more interesting mixing. Nothing you've proposed sounds in any way similar. Your words continue to amount to: withdraw from the public. I for one do not see that as a likely or desireable counter-conclusion for myself, for my friends and family, or for society.
> If we leave the one network our friend is on we lose all digital connection with that friend, lose the view we'd get of them interacting with others.
Ever since I started using the Fediverse, I haven't had this problem. Sure, most of my friends aren't there, but I'm happy to IM or email them instead.
yeah i actually like seeing my friends talking with each other & being able to join in the various conversations they're having.
if you're fine just leaving the online social circles your friends are in good for you. but i hope you can see how very very very very very short an answer & how rude is comes across to most people. and i'm sorry your friends are so boring.
I believe platforms have the right to moderate themselves as they see fit. They get that freedom, and we're better for letting private systems regulate themselves. Or, (as mentioned) as Twitter is floating, creating an “app store for moderation”, making moderation an interoperable layer rather than integrated.
And I agree with where Cory eventually brings the discussion to: what makes everything all feel so impossible is that switching costs are astronomical. If we leave the one network our friend is on we lose all digital connection with that friend, lose the view we'd get of them interacting with others. Competitive Compatibility is needed, to let us allow private companies to create their own rules, but to not keep each of us restrained & restricted within a handful of supersized networks.