Well put. Very disappointing that Dorsey put this on a platter and invited them to ask, and none did.
But at least there may be some momentum for this, now that Dorsey is supporting it as a possible solution (having cited you as one of the triggers for that), and a number of people beside you and me and Stephen Wolfram (recently in Foreign Affairs and WSJ) are promoting this idea as the only solution that gets to the root cause of disinformation becoming an extreme and seemingly intractable problem in social media. (My recent summary of these efforts is at http://bit.ly/SavDem0, and I expect to publish a fuller summary soon.)
Of course the problem in the hearings is that the solution is nuanced, and nuance is an ever tougher sell these days. As I put it in my post:
"Democracy depends on an open, diverse, and well-structured marketplace of ideas. Freedom of speech and of association are essential to our social processes for organically seeking a working consensus on ground-truth. But now, the “feeds” from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few others have become the dominant filters controlling which information, and which other users, billions of people see. Those oligarchies have nearly total power over what they selectively present each of us, with almost no transparency or oversight – and systematically against our interests!"
"…democracy requires that our marketplace of ideas be controlled by “we the people,” not platforms or advertisers. We must take back control as soon as possible. Current efforts at antitrust breakups and privacy regulation that leave filtering in the hands of others with their own agendas will perpetuate this mortal threat to democracy. Return of filtering power to citizens can revitalize our marketplace of ideas. It can augment our social processes for “mediating consent” and pursuing happiness – and provide a healthy base for gradual evolution toward digital democracy. But so long as others subvert control of our bicycles for the mind to their own ends, we have no time to lose.”"
As you say, "the real way to "break up" big tech platforms is to push for a world of protocols, rather than platforms, which would push the power out to the ends of the network, rather than keeping them centralized under a single silo with a giant owner."
Look at the example of the Bell system -- first with Carterfone and the modular jack, then with the modular business breakup into local (subdivided by regional geography), long distance, and manufacturing -- which opened up huge competitive innovation.
I expand on this and related issues in my post "Architecting Our Platforms to Better Serve Us -- Augmenting and Modularizing the Algorithm" at http://bit.ly/PlatMod.
It takes some sophistication to do this well, but the government once has that sophistication, and could again.
Freakonomists will be interested to consider a new variation on PWYW that has potential to change the game in pricing, especially for digital media.
FairPay (Fair PWYW) is a radically new pricing process that builds on the flexibility and participation that PWYW offers to buyers, but motivates them to pay fairly. It works where there is an ongoing relationship of continuing sales, and tracks how fairly buyers pay. If they pay fairly, the seller continues to extend more FairPay offers to them. If they do not pay fairly, they lose the privilege of continuing to buy on a FairPay basis, and must pay a conventional set price for future purchases. Unlike PWYW, FairPay is a two-way dialog that creates consequences for not paying fairly.
Because of this feedback cycle, this FairPay process may not work so well for single sales, like one movie or one album or one book, but can be very powerful for an ongoing series of sales. For example:
--An ongoing service of movie previews much like the Freakonomics movie offer...
--Individual songs from a collection of albums, offered in series, one at a time, or in small bundles...
--Individual items from a catalog of book chapters, articles, podcasts, or videos...
The process begins with one of a few low-value items, to test how the buyer sets prices. If the prices are reasonable, a few more items are offered. As the buyer builds a reputation for pricing fairly, more FairPay credit is extended (but never so much that there is too much risk that the buyer is done and will pay nothing for a valuable bundle). So perhaps it might better be called Pay-What-You-Think-Fair, because that is the result.
Details are at teleshuttle.com/FairPay.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Richard Reisman.
We need to Free Our Feeds!
Well put. Very disappointing that Dorsey put this on a platter and invited them to ask, and none did.
But at least there may be some momentum for this, now that Dorsey is supporting it as a possible solution (having cited you as one of the triggers for that), and a number of people beside you and me and Stephen Wolfram (recently in Foreign Affairs and WSJ) are promoting this idea as the only solution that gets to the root cause of disinformation becoming an extreme and seemingly intractable problem in social media. (My recent summary of these efforts is at http://bit.ly/SavDem0, and I expect to publish a fuller summary soon.)
Of course the problem in the hearings is that the solution is nuanced, and nuance is an ever tougher sell these days. As I put it in my post:
"Democracy depends on an open, diverse, and well-structured marketplace of ideas. Freedom of speech and of association are essential to our social processes for organically seeking a working consensus on ground-truth. But now, the “feeds” from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few others have become the dominant filters controlling which information, and which other users, billions of people see. Those oligarchies have nearly total power over what they selectively present each of us, with almost no transparency or oversight – and systematically against our interests!"
"…democracy requires that our marketplace of ideas be controlled by “we the people,” not platforms or advertisers. We must take back control as soon as possible. Current efforts at antitrust breakups and privacy regulation that leave filtering in the hands of others with their own agendas will perpetuate this mortal threat to democracy. Return of filtering power to citizens can revitalize our marketplace of ideas. It can augment our social processes for “mediating consent” and pursuing happiness – and provide a healthy base for gradual evolution toward digital democracy. But so long as others subvert control of our bicycles for the mind to their own ends, we have no time to lose.”"
Modularizing the platforms is the real answer
As you say, "the real way to "break up" big tech platforms is to push for a world of protocols, rather than platforms, which would push the power out to the ends of the network, rather than keeping them centralized under a single silo with a giant owner."
Look at the example of the Bell system -- first with Carterfone and the modular jack, then with the modular business breakup into local (subdivided by regional geography), long distance, and manufacturing -- which opened up huge competitive innovation.
I expand on this and related issues in my post "Architecting Our Platforms to Better Serve Us -- Augmenting and Modularizing the Algorithm" at http://bit.ly/PlatMod.
It takes some sophistication to do this well, but the government once has that sophistication, and could again.
A radical enhancement of PWYW, with consequences for unfairmess
FairPay (Fair PWYW) is a radically new pricing process that builds on the flexibility and participation that PWYW offers to buyers, but motivates them to pay fairly. It works where there is an ongoing relationship of continuing sales, and tracks how fairly buyers pay. If they pay fairly, the seller continues to extend more FairPay offers to them. If they do not pay fairly, they lose the privilege of continuing to buy on a FairPay basis, and must pay a conventional set price for future purchases. Unlike PWYW, FairPay is a two-way dialog that creates consequences for not paying fairly.
Because of this feedback cycle, this FairPay process may not work so well for single sales, like one movie or one album or one book, but can be very powerful for an ongoing series of sales. For example:
--An ongoing service of movie previews much like the Freakonomics movie offer...
--Individual songs from a collection of albums, offered in series, one at a time, or in small bundles...
--Individual items from a catalog of book chapters, articles, podcasts, or videos...
The process begins with one of a few low-value items, to test how the buyer sets prices. If the prices are reasonable, a few more items are offered. As the buyer builds a reputation for pricing fairly, more FairPay credit is extended (but never so much that there is too much risk that the buyer is done and will pay nothing for a valuable bundle). So perhaps it might better be called Pay-What-You-Think-Fair, because that is the result.
Details are at teleshuttle.com/FairPay.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Richard Reisman.
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