> My own sense of it is mostly that Cluetrain is attempting to describe and justify a new modality of relationships based on networks which are both many-to-many and bidirectional.
Sort of like Twitter and forums in the days when you could comment on what the company was saying and the replies got the same distribution as the PR.
There are too many things we can no longer have because they will be overwhelmed by spam.
Damned good point and one I'd utterly omitted in my prior comment. Yes, of course, feedback channels also get overwhelmed by actors with ulterior and/or malicious motives. See recent HN discussions on fake reviews and Yelp abuse. Or even encouraging fraudulent credit card transactions with competing merchants.
A friend coined what I call "Woozle's Epistemic Paradox", paraphrasing slightly:
"As epistemic systems become used more widely or by influential groups, there is substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place."
The general notion isn't original to her, though that formulation circa 2017 was my first encounter with it.
Sort of like Twitter and forums in the days when you could comment on what the company was saying and the replies got the same distribution as the PR.
There are too many things we can no longer have because they will be overwhelmed by spam.