Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch.

Welcome to Metaviews, recorded live in front of an automated audience.

Today we've gathered the OG Metaview's crew to kind of talk about whether social media can be saved.

Now, that may be a bit of a misnomer title.

That's kind, kind of what I'm hoping to get out of it.

But often, as we do with what I'm now calling the OG Meta crew, we tend, tend to take a bit of a random, spontaneous direction.

So who knows where we're going to end up other than social media kind of being the frame?

Because as we meet today on this very cold, dark day in January where we should be honoring the great Martin Luther King Jr.

We are instead lamenting the inauguration of Donald Trump becoming the first fascist president of the United States.

And social media has been playing a role.

And it's been interesting to see almost all the leaders of social media platforms not only donate money to the inauguration, but basically say, hey, look boss, whatever you want, you want no moderation, you got it.

No moderation.

And maybe even TikTok may be subjecting itself to American control.

So it seems like a historic moment when things are changing, things are up in the air, when it's an opportunity to discuss what should be, what could be, what is, and maybe even what has been.

So this salon was partly instigated, catalyzed by David Mason, a long standing Metaviews member.

So, David, why don't you kind of set us off with the angle you wanted us to take and in particular why you think social media happens to be potentially in a pivoting moment?

Yeah, sure.

So, I mean, it's good to start by, you know, trying to frame what is, what we mean by social media.

And I think to a large degree it's like the, you know, the Twitter or Twitter and, and all the different sites where, you know, the idea is you just kind of shout stuff into the void and, and you connect with people and you have a good time was kind of the idea.

And you know, I, I'm not a huge social media user myself.

I find it pretty overwhelming, but it can be useful.

And if you have a little, you know, if you might have a.

Find yourself in a decent little conversation.

I really liked the idea of Twitter in the first place when it was this hyperlocal idea.

They actually embedded everyone's latitude and longitude in every single tweet.

And it was really more of a like a commons idea at that point, because anyone could access that information, create their own views of it, and so on.

But, you know, here we are now and it's all been bugged in mind and surveilled.

It polarizes people.

It's really almost designed warping and designing, distorting conversation.

So what I wonder is what should it look like?

I mean, maybe it wasn't even a good idea in the first place because it's just so easily.

I mean, maybe it's just not a good idea to put yourself out there, you know, but, you know, if it is a good idea, what do we want it to look like?

You know, in order for people to be able to present their facts and perspectives and represent themselves and also, you know, safely share tactics.

And I certainly, to your point about how much should we be sharing is something I wish was more of a public conversation in this dawn of the fascist era, because this is all evidence that can be used against us.

And I've been kind of wondering whether I should be deleting past histories or conversely being proud of it.

Right.

And trying to be a voice that's an alternative to this.

And of course the other side, David, in terms of you kind of raising the question, what should it look like?

There is this kind of open source initiative either within the kind of AT protocol which the Fediverse is really championing and Blue sky also being not exactly part of the Fediverse, but nonetheless embracing kind of open source protocols.

There is movement certainly on the developer level, if not also on the user level, with people leaving X or leaving Twitter.

Jeanette, I kind of want to throw to you only because I know that you've been going through your own kind of assessment, similar to how David's thinking, should we have social media?

What role does social media play?

And I know, Jeanette, you're going through your own kind of re evaluation of where you kind of spend your time in social media and which platform should get your attention or value.

So where do you see us in this current spot?

And to David's point, what should this stuff be looking like?

What's your ideal kind of social media configuration?

I mean, I honestly don't know.

I do feel like it's one of those things where when you see it, you'll know that that's what it is.

Two things sort of have been on my mind and what David said kind of reminded me.

One is that I've seen elements of this moment before.

Part of what I studied when I was doing work in history was the massive explosion of print.

When printing, as a way of making your voice heard, became accessible to just regular Folks, starting in this, you know, if we're talking about the UK, for instance, starting in the 17th century.

And of course, the natural consequence of that was the learned elites lamented that now every idiot had a megaphone, essentially, and that the, the public sphere was being flooded with all kinds of garbage.

I think this happens every time.

It's a double edged sword.

It's the other thing that has been really bothering me lately is I have a mutual on Twitter, which I'm still on.

I'm kind of still hanging on there.

And he, this is a really super smart guy who I respect a lot, but he keeps banging on, he keeps reposting the same tweet, which is saying, in effect, oh, you dummies.

You think that things like rednote and Tick Tock are liberatory and subversive, but they are just, you know, the most masterful propaganda control mechanism there is.

And every time I read that, I think, dude, they're both.

How.

Why is that so hard to accept that they can be both?

I, I think there's a, you know, in lefty circles, there's this truism about that I think started with Audre Lorde.

You know, the master's tools can never be used to disassemble the master's house.

But my experience of human beings is they hack everything, they subvert everything.

It's engineers who think tools will be used for the purpose that they are designed for and nothing else.

People are so perversely contrary.

And you see this especially with children, they will do things you couldn't even imagine with a tool.

And I don't think social media is any different in that respect.

It certainly suggests that there are applications of social media that we haven't gotten into yet, that there's ways in which we could bend the platform, bend the medium, so that it has perhaps more resilient characteristics outside of the propaganda, outside of the kind of contagion of stupidity.

Now, Stroh, I want to bring you in to the conversation.

Although, David, you just raised your hand, so if you want to do a hot pursuit, please jump in.

Oh, yeah, I just wanted to.

I mean, I'm sorry.

One thing that really has been on my mind for a long time is that, you know, the, the, the idea that this media could and should be symmetrical, and in particular, we, the individual, should be using the media to critique the system.

But what has happened instead is that it's asymmetrical and the system is basically being used to undermine the individual.

I have a lot of ideas about what it should look like.

And that's exactly how it looks to the people behind the dashboards at Facebook and Twitter and even Bluesky and unfortunately Mastodon as well.

So, yeah, sorry, I just wanted to add that one point.

Well, and I wouldn't mind at some point coming back to the idea of transparent analytics, of having an actually transparent social media system in which we can not only see the activity of who's posting and what they're posting, but have that administrator's view, have a sense of the meta view.

But Stroh, I kind of wanted to bring you in both to put you on the spot as someone who's a creator, right.

Someone who, you know, in using social media, is doing so from the perspective not just of the consumer, but of someone producing content.

But I'm also curious, from an athletic perspective, are there rules to the playing field of social media that we don't have, that we could have?

And I say this because, you know, a lot of what makes sports interesting are the constraints are the rules that are placed on the game.

And social media doesn't really have rules.

Maybe there should be some.

Right?

So, you know, it is kind of, it's kind of an anarchist way of communicating, isn't it?

And it's like if we had, if we had rules like transparency, for example, then maybe we would be more accountable.

It is very much like what Jeanette suggested, like the early days of print.

Right.

Because this is such a new technology and we haven't caught up, our educational system hasn't caught up really, our moral and ethical standards, laws even having caught up to where we are giving everybody the bullhorn.

Right.

So, yeah, it would help.

Of course it would help.

But how do you do that?

Right.

It goes back to education, obviously, like, because our speaking as a parent even this is how our kids socialize, like, truly, it's, you know, this is where they learn their, their behavior from in so many ways.

That's why our world is becoming so much more violent.

Well, you know, and that's arguable, you know, but sexualized.

Why there's so much more mental health issues when it comes to, like, how people see themselves, not just girls, but boys too now, right.

To, to a much greater extent.

So of course, if, if we could find a way to, you know, have these things.

But it comes back to regulation.

How do we, you know, how do we regulate something that is literally in everybody's hand?

Do we need to control it?

Right.

And I, I think long term that's going to have to happen when too Many people are.

Start.

Start getting hurt or not because of what, like just even your post this morning, I was kind of skimming through it, talking about the, you know, how they're.

Whoever.

There's what.

I forget the term you use, but basically it's you're screwed or you're getting screwed kind of a thing.

Right.

So maybe you can tell me what that word was.

I don't know if you remember.

Well, it was like, sucks to be you.

Was.

Was.

Yes.

Sucks to be you.

That's what it.

That's right.

Sucks to be you.

Well, how do we make sure that, you know, we have things in place and that that is the government, the government's job to govern that so we don't cause harm with it.

Right.

To kind of regulate it.

And maybe that's a long way to can say, yes, regulation would be good because sports are great because you, you have a code that you can play by.

Right.

And if there's no code, then it's just the biggest bully wins.

Well, and I think the other sort of point you made right at the outset was transparency, because the thing about sports is, you know, the rules.

Right.

Like.

Like both teams understand the rules.

Both teams are playing by the same rules.

That doesn't happen in social media.

Right.

If, if there are rules, it's hidden.

Go ahead.

And what's more is that there's somebody ref refereeing the game.

Yes.

A neutral party that needs to actually, like, try to implement that.

Right.

Although there is, you know, a lot of speculation online that the pervasive gambling in sports has made referees corruptible.

Right.

And it is interesting to see them doubt that.

But that's not new.

No, no, but it's, it's maybe louder.

And I think to your point about rules, you know, people didn't like that TikTok was being banned or subject to rules, so they ran to RedNote, which has more rules.

Like, the terms of service of RedNote are really quite onerous and include things like you can't bully, you can't be mean.

And people like that, even though I don't think they're going to stay, they're coming back to TikTok.

But to your point, I think there is a desire for them to be not so much control, but fairness.

And yet Jeanette's point of humans resist control, humans find ways to evade control, also has a dynamic here, I think that is interesting.

So, Sharita, if I could bring you into the conversation, I'm curious where you fall into all of this again as a social Media user.

But keeping in mind, David's kind of a central challenge, which is what should social media be like?

What should it look like?

How should it work?

Or maybe should it not exist at all?

Which is certainly something I think that we should entertain on the table.

The first thing, really, that I've been thinking about all the way through this is that social media, its foundation is social.

Well, some people think its foundation is social network theory.

Certainly you can analyze it by social network theory, but there are some theories about this.

And generally speaking, people who are participating are following those theories.

So, for instance, one theory in terms of social networks is that birds of a feather stick together.

And when that happens, when you are generally, you know, really focusing on somebody who has the same bias as you, you begin to form social networks.

And then that relates in a way to who you trust.

You trust the people in your pack.

You don't trust the people out there.

So that dynamic's happening.

On top of that, if you were to put to.

To think about what Jeanette is saying and that there's always outriders, there's always out there, people in the, you know, whatever sphere that are not playing by anybody's rules, including social network theory, then the idea of, all right, so there already are some rules in terms of social networks.

I'll go back to social network theory, but then you have algorithm algorithms being put on top of that.

So another set of rules is going on, and that set of rules is dependent on the bias of whoever programmed the algorithm.

So what you're getting here is a caffeine of sound.

Although let me push back there, because the word rhythm can be found in algorithm and that, you're right, I think at the default level, it's a cacophony of sound.

But what was interesting in these quote, unquote, final days of TikTok, because of course, they weren't, but they created a mania.

They created a sense that everyone experienced it.

TikTok was giving them a rhythm.

It was giving them a rhythm that, yes, in some cases, they're literally dancing to, but in other cases, it speaks to why they're participating on the platform.

Because I was also thinking about, to your point, the cacophony and the birds of feather.

What I really liked about Twitter during the pandemic was the people who, like, who are birds of a feather.

For me, around Covid, right, Who were Covid aware, who were researching about COVID who were saying, yeah, you gotta wear a mask.

Yeah, you gotta protect yourself.

And there was a part of me that didn't want to leave Twitter because I didn't want to leave those people, but now I found them on Threads.

So Threads has quickly figured out that I'm into Covid people, and I keep going back to Threads, even though it's actually a craptacular social media platform form.

But it's because it's giving me that birds of a feather.

However, the rhythm of the Threads algorithm is terrible.

Like, absolutely terrible.

There's no rhythm at all.

And so I'm going there for this single note.

But to your point, there's a lot of cacophony.

So I'm positing that the social media I want to go back to.

David's question is one that has a lot of rhythm, that the algorithm has a rhyme to it, that the algorithm has a flow to it, that it generates a kind of music that keeps me kind of engaged.

And that's been rare for me as a social media user.

But TikTok has done it on, on some occasions.

Stroh, please jump into the conversation.

Yeah, you know, what's, what's coming to my mind when you're talking about birds of a feather and just the rules around how these things, you know, our social rules are built into our nature or whatever is actually silos.

I think the danger of, the danger of social media isn't that we're birds, but.

But that it's easier.

The algorithm creates silos.

And it's not a natural discourse.

Right.

Like, we're not like birds of a feather have.

Or birds in general.

Right.

They have a purpose in nature, whereas it, they're, you know, it's.

I, I think that the real issue is that the algorithm, the rhythm itself creates silos and structures that are in.

Impenetrable in a way, and that's why we've been.

We've become so polarized and that's, that's why the world's so.

Because.

Right.

Like, we don't have discourse anymore.

Like, we even.

This is a silo in a way.

Because who would be here with, like, with a really vehemently opposing position to what.

You know, although you raise, you.

You raise a key point that I want to reinforce because not only are we a silo intellectually, right.

In terms of, you know, the five of us kind of have.

While we are different, we have a certain bias in common, which is a desire to talk about this stuff.

Right.

Desire to hang out and problem solve, maybe.

Sure.

Sure.

We are, but we are.

And this is interesting in terms of my relationship with all four of you, we are still a minority within the minority because of the current meta views readership.

Most are lurkers, right?

Most are people who read it a lot.

Often like each.

Each issue, they'll read it five times, but they won't click on the like button.

They won't post a comment, and they certainly won't post a salon.

Because the other thing to your point, Stroh, about bias is the bias of participation.

Not everyone who uses social media participates.

Right?

We only see the people participating.

We see the people posting, but we don't see the lurkers.

And I think we underestimate both their power and their influence.

But to bring it back to our focus, how could we redesign social media to incentivize the lurkers to participate more?

Because I'm convinced that social media depends upon participation the way democracy depends upon participation.

So, David, you just raised your hand.

Please jump in.

Yeah, I'm not sure about participation.

I kind of feel representation is more important and just what you're most recently talking about.

So I'm not going to.

I really didn't sleep well last night, so I'm not going to have the most precise terminology here or even good recall.

But, but you know, it's become dangerous for a number of reasons.

And one is that, you know, the social media company or organization is, you know, has a special access to what you're saying and you know, all their partners and some of their partners are, can be very, very nefarious, have access to what you're saying.

But also anyone pretty much can sit there and scrape contents and you'll see like one of the first things that happened on when Blue sky opened up, it became a refuge.

Left leaning millennials and people on Twitter started scraping their profiles and posting them on.

On Twitter.

Right.

So that's why, I mean, I think, I think my, probably my most concrete way just put it out there what I think it might maybe should look like.

And this is going to sound terrible in a way, but in a few ways.

But it's kind of one system I've heard description is the way that Google proposes to do advertising.

And I'm probably getting a little bit wrong.

And it was panned of course, because a company like Google will get a hyper criticized and they should.

But my read of it was called Flock and basically it would create a bundle of identifiers of who people are.

And I think that's how you should serve social media, as a bundle of identifiers.

And so when somebody posts something, you should say what Bundle of identifiers posted this.

And you should be able to choose what level of disclosure you have over your actual identity.

And there's a really important idea that's starting to emerge now called personhood, where you can actually have, like, an authority, say, this is a unique person.

And that's a really interesting idea to layer on top of that.

But for now, I think just in terms of.

Of safety and reasonableness, I think that, you know, we should acknowledge the lurker factor.

We should allow those people to become a new kind of participant.

Pass to like a dashboard.

They click, but maybe.

And even past a, you know, reaction or like.

Or whatever.

But yeah, that level.

That level, I think, is next.

And that level becomes very necessary when it's so easy to make, you know, any quantity of fake persons that are incredibly realistic as well.

I think that's a brilliant idea.

And it kind of suggests that the current problem with social media is it's too individualistic that, you know, if we really want to socialize, the social media part, we have to allow teams, right?

We have to allow people to use social media as a group, to use social media as part of a larger team.

Of course, the most radical application of that would be the black block, right?

The social media black block.

You got 100 people all gathered together causing shit, ripping down the power structures, trolling at a level never seen before.

But similarly, the privacy benefits of pooling your data and having that data aggregated amongst a group of people that could even be strangers in the Tor, the onion routing concept.

So I think that's a fantastic idea.

And certainly it could be as easy as sharing a password and sharing a vpn, but it looks like you want to follow up, David, please.

Well, I guess another area that I maybe don't agree with some perspectives is that, well, there are ways that people who want to cooperate on whatever degree of.

Of benign or, you know, kind of their own techniques of interacting with the world can do so anonymously.

I personally think that it should be difficult but possible to discover who people really are.

I think that's possibly an important component of the network design.

Yeah, like multiple court orders, basically, and rigorous process.

Well, the Chinese government at one point introduced what I thought was actually a laudable policy, which was controllable anonymity, which is the idea that you would be anonymous to companies, you'd be anonymous to the Internet, but the government ultimately would know who you are.

And granted, that depends upon your trust in the government, and it doesn't necessarily have to be the government.

It could be a trusted third party, the way that we do have trusted intermediaries that work that way.

Jeanette, let me try to bring you into the conversation here both in terms of the multiple threads that we've brought out.

Whether you want to comment on David's notion here of the aggregate or group identity, both on the data side as well as the expression side, but also to go back to that core question that we're trying to hit on.

What could we do to make social media both a better user experience?

But I would also elevate that to, you know, better for democracy.

Right.

If what we're mourning today is the rise of fascism, what are the changes that we could bring to socialized media that ensures there was more people, power involved rather than, you know, megaphones for billionaires?

Well, you know, one thing, and this really has nothing to do with the.

The issues around privacy, which are completely legitimate.

But when David was speaking, I was reflecting on my time teaching in a classroom and thinking about how any teacher is going to encounter this issue of, you know, there's lots of students who are very eager to participate, almost too eager sometimes, and their voices dominate the room.

And if you only paid attention to what was said in the class, you would have a very biased opinion of what that classroom was about, because you'll have another group, probably the majority, who will only speak occasionally or when directly called upon.

And then, of course, you have a group who do not want to speak at all for whatever reasons.

And the challenge is, how do you include those kids or adults, depending on what group you're teaching?

How do you draw them into the class without forcing them?

Right.

Without making them uncomfortable?

Because I personally made the transition over my life from deeply introverted to extroverted.

And I hated the forced participation.

You still do?

Yeah, actually, I do still hate that.

I don't like being forced on anything.

But it was.

I.

I was just afraid to make a fool of myself and I didn't want to speak for that reason.

I.

I'm not saying that's the only reason people don't want to speak.

That there.

I'm sure there's as many reasons as there are people, but how do we create a structure where, you know, those students feel comfortable having a voice?

And just to throw something off the top of my head, you know, one thing I tried was just smaller forums.

Sometimes that makes the difference.

Someone may not want to speak up in a whole of class setting, but they are comfortable speaking in a group of, let's say, three people, and that we're in, you know, as part of a group.

Right.

To speak to the aggregate identity.

I mean, one of the signs I felt of rising fascism within the United States social media ecosystem was the average individual's fear of being canceled, which I always thought was absurd because, like, you have nothing that could be canceled, right?

You don't have a TV show, you don't have a famous brand.

But I would constantly, and I still do, would hear these people talk about, you know, I don't want to get canceled, but.

Or I don't want to say anything because then I'll get canceled.

Like, you're not in a position to be canceled.

But in the US the notion of being canceled was, to your point, the fear of being a fool.

Right.

It was the consequence for exercising speech on social media.

It was the consequence of speaking differently on social media.

So, Sharita, I kind of want you to follow up on what Jeanette was saying as well as David, in terms of responding to my desire to see more participation.

And I think they're both sort of saying maybe we should be defending people's right not to participate or create alternate avenues for them to participate.

But I'm curious for you to add to that.

The angle of these are dangerous times.

Right.

Participation, while necessary to push back against the fascism, can also make one vulnerable in terms of the political climate that we find ourselves in.

In terms of the political climate that we find ourselves in, I think we're all vulnerable.

And I think that we have to.

We have to fight back by small heroics.

And small heroics are basically speaking what you are speaking who you are.

I'm thinking to myself, the chances of somebody finding me really speaking my mind are not that high.

Hold on, why do you say that?

Elaborate.

I have a small view.

I have a small focus.

I have a small footprint online.

So I feel free in many ways to speak because I think that I'm the needle in the haystack.

Now, I could argue it the other way as well.

Yeah, please do.

Because the needle in the haystack doesn't apply anymore.

Well, I don't.

I don't think it applies anymore in terms of if somebody really wants to find you, they will.

And I've done that.

I've seen that time and time again.

But.

But there's a flip side to what David was describing in terms of Google at one point having this Flock initiative where they wanted to put people into groups.

Yes.

There are no needles in the haystack because algorithms can measure all the needles and account for all the Needles.

And you're correct that they'll probably go for other people before they go for you.

Yes.

Even though the historical parallels are there, There is a greater efficiency at play in our contemporary moment.

And that's where I think David's earlier evocation of the analytics dashboards.

Right.

That the people who manage these ecosystems have a view that we do not possess, and that if we as users had that view, everything would be different.

And that doesn't mean good or better or worse, but people already behave differently based on their desire to go viral or their desire to get more attention.

And if they could see the logic at work, if they could see the system at work.

And that's where I say, you know, I think the feeling that a lot of people have, and I was on a podcast this morning where the guy was wishing that the incoming executive would be assassinated.

And, you know, I was like, man, that's a dangerous thing to be doing.

Like, they have the ability to inventory all of that.

They don't necessarily have the resources to get to you.

But next time you want to cross the border, next time you want to encounter it, they could just do a quick search, and bam, there you are.

That doesn't concern you.

That doesn't worry you at all.

It doesn't worry me in terms of the kinds of heroics that I would participate in.

Right.

Yes, they can find you, like what you were just saying.

But I think in terms of my drilling down, my heroics are not necessarily going to be painted on a screen, but they are there.

And if you, you know, if you really wanted to find everybody who didn't agree with your thinking or who was thinking that you're a fascist, blah, blah, blah, yes, you could do that, but it may be a great waste of your time.

I hope you're right.

What worries me is the amount of people who are getting in line.

Right.

And where normally I would feel that there is safety in numbers, I worry about how many people are going to be in those numbers.

Stroh, let me throw to you only because you, I think, like most of us here on the Call, have been openly radical your entire life in terms of communicating what's in your heart and sharing what's in your mind.

Do you feel any chill in the air in terms of human expression?

Yeah.

You know what this just made me think was that all the social media is actually a way of controlling and understanding all of us, because the AI, there is no needles in the haystack.

Everything is right in front of them.

And if they have the power, then they have to control it, which they do, because they control it.

Right.

They know exactly what's going on.

So I think if we're talking about the future of social media, I think it goes back to being social and getting offline, because anything there is toeing the line for the powers that be.

Right.

So it is really about human interaction and doing right by, you know, like in.

It comes back to accountability, integrity of.

Of your own person.

Right.

So to be radical in the social media environment of today and to change social media, we have to.

We have to start being social again, you know, breaking bread.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And.

And not just on the breaking bread side, but also in terms of graffiti, in terms of zines, in terms of media that you experience in person.

Right.

You have to be in person and part of the community to experience that kind of media.

Yeah.

You know, and the chill for me, with social media and how.

How prevalent it all is and how is that we're.

We're becoming more and more illiterate as a species.

Right.

Like, we're actually thinking critically less because of how we're put into these groups, whether, like, I think it's happening anyways, Right.

Like, it's happened.

We're.

It's.

It's.

It's like the discourse isn't there.

It's me versus it's polarized.

Right.

So there's definitely a chill.

And it's not a rise of fascism, it's a reemergence of it.

Right.

Because we've let so much of the free thought go wayside for whatever interests, you know, for the.

Screw you guys.

Well, and also, I think there's a dynamic here in terms of the TikTok in particular, where before this moment, right.

When TikTok as it existed last week, had a lot of left wing content, had a lot of left wing voices, had a lot of critical voices who, you know, were not just critical of the United States.

We're critical of China, we're critical of Israel, we're critical of everything.

And will be interesting to see if that remains because TikTok, certainly in terms of Western social media or social media available in the west, had the most political diversity.

It certainly had fascists, it certainly had conservatives and liberals and social democrats and.

And communists and anarchists.

But that's what made it interesting was it had that diversity.

I don't see that diversity elsewhere, which is why I think, Stroh, we may end up going back to face to face Going back to using postal mail and graffiti and, you know, grassroots communication, but within the spirit of what we're describing.

I'm curious, David or Jeanette or Shavita Stroh, if any of you could think of what could change in the social media we do have, that would make it more diverse.

Right?

I mean, researchers have talked about the byproduct of the engagement algorithm, that it rewards extremists.

Right.

Can we think of a different way of configuring the algorithm that is more fair or more equitable in terms of how it distributes attention?

And I say this because while this may not be the direction things are headed, I think there's a lot of interest in entertaining these types of alternatives.

I.

I think we got to take the algorithm out of the equation if we're going to change that, because the algorithm has a bias.

Right.

And that's the.

That's the real issue there.

You know, it's.

I think, in an odd stroke of maybe doing the right thing, whether he means in the.

Rod Zuckerberg, by not having the algorithm take control of the.

Whatever content is there by policing it, that might be actually a good way, because it opens it up to everybody.

Except he's.

He's got to be lying.

Like, there's no way.

There's no way he'd allow that.

Sorry, Jeanette, go ahead.

I.

You know, just to respond to what Stroh said, I always.

Whatever bias comes up and.

Jesse.

Sorry, I'm taking your line here, please.

I have to point out there's good bias.

Nobody ever says no to good bias.

Like, clearly, you've identified the negative bias, the way that algorithms currently are essentially dark patterns.

You know, the thing I keep thinking about is food.

The way that modern processed food in, in particular, North America has been engineered over.

Engineered to be as addictive as possible.

Right?

That's why you eat a whole bag of chips before you even know it.

That's.

To me, there's no difference between that and the algorithms you see on these social media platforms.

So what's the solution to that?

Well, you have to present people with an alternative that is just as satisfying, but is not, you know, the.

The playing on every atavistic drive you have to consume salty, fatty, crunchy food.

And I think that, you know, and.

And maybe that's eating, you know, a really good heirloom tomato or something like that, which is a taste experience most people don't have anymore.

Go ahead.

Although you're.

You're making a good point, which is we have to have the rewards.

But we don't want the rewards to be junk food, right?

We want the rewards to be healthy.

We want the rewards.

You know, for example, I've always been motivated by video games, right?

Or when I first played on a bbs, it was like a Dungeons and Dragons game where you could level up.

So if there's something that there's rewards, if there's something's a level up, I'll do it.

Right?

And the question is, what kind of leveling up, what kind of rewards could we envision that are positive when it comes to community development, that are positive when it comes to cognitive development, like learning, for example.

And could that be embedded into a social media platform?

And I'm floating this not because I agree with it, because I think it could be kind of draconian, but what if, for example, before you're allowed to post, you have to share or retweet five other people's posts?

So before you can add your own voice, you have to elevate other people's voices, right?

As a way of kind of paying it forward before you then earn the privilege to participate yourself.

Potentially easily manipulated.

But I'm curious what you guys think of those kinds of social contracts being embedded into the logic of these sorts of platforms.

Yeah, that has existed as an approach.

I can't recall offhand.

It might be not a popular system anymore, but there I have seen systems before where you have to basically moderate before you can actually participate, as both as a kind of a captcha and as a way to make sure that you're, you know, serious about participating.

You've spent some time learning about the community.

I think it's a totally reasonable idea.

I don't know if people would stand for it, but.

Yeah, go ahead, Stroh or sri.

Yeah, so go ahead, Stroh.

So, you know, what I was just thinking is because a social media identity is an identity no different than the name you're born with or whatever.

We all.

We all get to be born with it.

And it's part of our educational system.

So you don't post, but you have to graduate to have access and input.

Right?

So you have to do a certain amount of learning or have a certain amount of level to be able to contribute to the social, to our conversation.

Our conversation.

You have to have a certain understanding so that we're not giving a soapbox to people that may not have a greater understanding.

Right?

So you actually go through school.

You know, if you.

If you have your high school, well, then you get to use this kind of.

And the reward is you get more money, that's guaranteed income because you've achieved and you keep leveling up that way through education.

Sharita, I think there, there needs to be multiple interventions.

However, one intervention might be that you encourage a form of cyber literacy where you learn how to game the system.

You do that, Jess.

Self taught.

No, but it's the people, it's the hacker ethic.

So you sort of embed this, you know, and, and this was the earlier point about how humans are constantly evading attempts to be controlled and are exactly.

Constantly defying the logic and the rules.

So what if you built a system that rewarded that, that encouraged that, that elevated that, but also you don't build.

The system, you build the human.

You want to elaborate on that?

I don't mean this as a great truth.

All I'm really responding to is that you teach or you model, show people how to game the system.

You don't.

The system doesn't reward that.

Right, right.

You reward it, or whoever does with the individual.

And then the individual, their incentive there is.

To basically do what they want.

Right.

And not so much be influenced by those you know around you.

Now, mind you, that's only going to work for a certain percentage of the population, most of us, in whatever area we want to think about our sheep.

Well, but.

And this evokes a whole other dynamic which I'm going to put to aside because I have a separate question, Jeanette, I want to throw to you.

But this kind of evokes the inherent elitism of social media that on the one hand, Jeanette was kind of citing, you know, the.

With every media cycle, the elite feels threatened by all the new people who are able to use the media, but those new people essentially become part of the elite because you still don't get to a point of universality.

We don't have universality when it comes to social media.

And if anything, social media via influencers have created a new elite.

But I thought David indirectly, in talking about whether people would go through these measures, evoked the idea of frictionless design.

Like Facebook conquered the world because they made everything as easy, easy as possible.

So that in fact all the idiots are on Facebook because Facebook makes it easy for them to communicate, to participate.

So Jeanette, as someone who refuses to be forced to do anything, and in fact, while you are perfectly willing to do very hard and complicated things that you choose, if someone else asks you to do something that's very hard and difficult, chances are you're not going to do do it.

So I'm curious, both from your own experience as a social media user, but also your perspective as an educator.

Can you help us kind of close the circle here?

Can we incentivize greater behavior, yet at the same time, keep it simple?

Can we do, as Sharita said, foster hacking of the system, but still have a system that can handle being hacked?

I mean, sure.

The one thing that came to mind, I think Stroh was the first one to invoke the education system, and then Sharita kind of picked that up.

If we're sheep, it's because the education system is entirely calculated to produce that.

It's, it is essentially a compliance machine.

So I think what Sharita is outlining is actually extremely powerful, but it's the opposite of the current structure we have.

Right.

And because it really is not about fitting in, it's about figuring out what you are and that what I am is very different from what everybody else is.

And maybe my goal should be the best that I can be.

If we could find a social media structure that supported that, I think we'd have something truly empowering.

But you know, what I see in the current thing, to go back to stuff we've already talked, we've already touched on, is generally an environment that is.

Twitter, to me, is the most extreme version of this.

Now, incredibly hostile.

Failure to conform brings down an army of bots.

Right.

Not just individuals who've decided to punish you, but, but in fact, you know, things that aren't even people.

And so people are.

And because outrage is the currency of that particular platform, that's what everybody is motivated to do.

So what would a social media platform look like that, you know, was the opposite of that?

I don't know.

I mean, I really, I can't say.

Although you did answer it in the sense that it's pre, it's prerequisite is an entirely different educational system that, rather than foster compliance, fosters critical thinking.

Yeah.

And beyond critical thinking, I would say critical doing.

That's not.

I'm sorry, that's not really a no.

But taking action rather than just getting lost in theory, which unfortunately, the North American left is completely ensconced in theory, and, and hence why there's not a lot of action happening.

David, you've got your hand up, please.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So I, I mostly was, was kind of reacting to one idea that I was hearing.

Maybe that's mishearing, but I, I, I don't.

I guess I'm a little bit uncomfortable with the idea that it should Be kind of like a.

Even.

Maybe even critical thinking is.

Is, you know, critical thinking is an important skill.

But above all, I think somebody who, you know, I think basically, unless you're talking about like a.

An institution, then if you're talking about something that is a response, it needs tone.

Like a tone and kind of the tools so that anyone can represent, you know, that they're.

If they're like a coal miner and they're unhappy and they're not speaking your.

Your lefty language, that should be fine.

You know, it should be a way to have you not come to blows, basically.

And, you know, so.

So in that case, that's, That's.

That is why.

I mean, one.

One thing that I've thought about for quite a long time is that where the web came from is a research network.

And we should feel like we're on a research network where we're all experimenting and we make mistakes and we're putting forward propositions and theses and people are.

And providing evidence and, you know, so I guess, you know, having that kind of we're scientists tone and we're collecting evidence tone without it having to look a certain way or to be according to certain theories might be a good approach.

Well, and the thread there, I think, between what all of us are saying is that it should have a pedagogic configuration that at its core level, it should be learning.

Go ahead, Jeanette.

I just want to quickly respond to what David said, because what he's describing is what the scientific ethos is supposed to be.

Of course, in reality, this is not how scientists behave, as Twitter demonstrates.

Yeah, well, and just the world of scientific publishing, for example.

I mean, and this critique of science has, you know, that's been around for quite a while.

But what is.

What strikes me is that you see that behavior the minute you attach the rewards of power to certain kinds of behavior.

That's why people don't behave in a disinterested, supportive, you know, let us mutually explore the nature of reality kind of way.

As soon as there are wards of power attached to particular behaviors, that's where they go.

Well, and maybe that's, you know, the foreground.

Right, The.

The title of the fictitious social media platform we're imagining is this is the place where power is held in the hands of the many.

And then the subtitle is we don't come to blows.

Right.

And that speaks to the culture, again, my desire for there to be a rhythm to the algorithm.

Right.

For there to be a kind of rhyme to the way in which these platforms play out.

Any closing thoughts or final words on kind of where we see the future of social media, or more aptly, where we would like to see the future of social media?

Stroh?

Yeah, you know, I would love for it to become what we want it to be, which is something that teaches us how to be better and understands each other better.

And I think it is right, because if the medium is the message, then we see all the data, we see everything that's happening, and the people that are actually inclined to do something better for humanity that have that in mind will take that from it.

So I think it's inevitable.

But to keep it natural and not controlled by few is to keep it truly democratic is, you know, ideally where we'd like to see it go right.

On out of the hands of the oligarchs and into the hands of the people.

Power to the people.

Very cool.

Sharita, any final words?

I in, in my mind, I keep going back to some of the groups that I've participated with, you know, in online and to me, that's social media as well, and that if you got involved a long time ago, taught you how to behave in social media, before you had Twitter, before, you know, all that other stuff.

So I would be interested not in big monoliths, but in small cooperative types of systems.

Well, and ultimately that's, I suppose, one of the promises of the Fediverse, but currently it would require far more widespread media literacy and technological literacy to actually have happen.

David, any final words or closing thoughts?

No, no, I appreciated it.

You know, in some ways, you know, I think structure is an important part of it purpose and structure is an important part of it and not being abductible by oligarchs and other.

Other forces.

But yeah, it's.

And as well, absolutely, like breakouts and all these different kinds of things.

But yeah, it's a hard problem, that's for sure.

Well, and I think for me, kind of, I feel that all of us are of a certain vintage that we remember when media wasn't social.

Right.

When media was broadcast, when media was one way.

And maybe our frustrations is because the socialization of media hasn't been sufficient.

Right?

We need the socialization of ownership, we need the socialization of control, we need the socialization of identity, all as ways to make our media more valuable, more useful to the rest of us.

So thank you very much to our esteemed council of wise intellectuals, AKA the OG metaviews.

Comes out relatively frequent at the moment.

Not sure we're gonna keep this pace up for too much longer, but by all means, find us on your social media platforms, especially the social media platform that we're expecting you to invent that we will open accounts on as soon as it is available, and offers an alternative to the dumpster fire that we currently find ourselves in.

So with that said, we'll see you soon.

Thank.