Silicon Valley's typical startup model as codified in Peter Thiel's From Zero
to One is to become as large a monopoly as possible as quickly as possible.
Mainstream founders and investors like this model because it enables them to
maximize the return on their sweat equity and capital investment. By extension,
founders and investors tend to eschew privacy, security, free speech, and other
values about which we care because there are no templates for their ready
adoption that will provide a clear benefit at minimal cost. Consumers and users
on the whole care about such values, however, so founders and investors tend to
pay at best symbolic lip service to these values in an attempt to monetize
them.
As a result, Liberationtech startups tend to attract only niche founders and
investors who are willing to compromise on profit maximization to advance the
public good. Because Liberationtech startups try to advance the public good,
they also tend not to pursue monopoly status. For these reasons, Liberationtech
startups tend to raise less money, leaving them with less capital to invest in
sales and marketing, meaning fewer consumers and users and thus slower growth,
in turn leaving them in a weaker position vis-a-vis their non-Liberationtech
Silicon Valley competitors on the way to monopoly status.
This is a wicked problem, one that by definition is difficult or impossible to
solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are
often difficult to recognize.
YosemCompanysPresident and CEOTechlantisM: (650) 796-1205A:2225 East Bayshore
Road, Suite 200,Palo Alto, CA 94303W: www.techlantis.comE: [email protected]
To schedule an appointment with me, please visit https://calendly.com/yosem.
On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 11:43 AM, David Stodolsky [email protected]
wrote:
> On 15 Jun 2020, at 17:04, Klein, Hans K <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Again, the key questions are:
> - Is it possible to coordinate/control information dissemination? If so, how?
> - Is that actually occurring?
The major platforms are all censoring. FaceBook is probably the worst of these.
It also is promoting violence via its engagement algorithms. Twitter is probably
the best of them now.
There are independent media like The Intercept, Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio,
etc.
Podcasts offer direct info from educational institutions, political groups,
musicians, etc.
Self-hosting is likely the future, but it doesn’t have much reach yet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
There are mesh networking initiatives that also want to free transmission from
the Internet, etc.:
Anadiotis, G. (2018 October 25). Manyverse and Scuttlebutt: A human-centric
technology stack for social applications. ZD-Net
https://www.zdnet.com/article/manyverse-and-scuttlebutt-a-human-centric-technology-stack-for-social-applications/
Siri, S. (2020). Democracy in the Age of Cryptography. Unchained, Ep.159.
https://unchainedpodcast.com/democracy-in-the-age-of-cryptography/
Staltz, A. (2017, 18 Dec.). A plan to rescue the web from the internet.
https://staltz.com/a-plan-to-rescue-the-web-from-the-internet.html
Staltz, A. (2018, 4/19). Scuttlebutt, a decentralized social platform. In the
Mesh.
https://www.inthemesh.com/archive/secure-scuttlebutt-facebook-alternative/
However, none of these alternatives have been widely enough adopted to challenge
the big players. Most big players are able to provide “free” access, due to
making losses at the start and then becoming monopoly players attracting
advertisers. Some kind of crypto-currency financing is necessary for independent
media to compete. This example does it for the transmission costs:
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-438-bootstrapping-mobile-mesh-networks-with-bitcoin-lightning
There are a number of crypto-payments to publisher schemes.
dss
David Stodolsky, PhD Institute for Social Informatics
Tornskadestien 2, st. th., DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark
[email protected] Tel./Signal: +45 3095 4070
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