Social Networks and “Living in the Future”
We’ve Only Just Begun
Meta launched it’s Instagram based text-focused app called Threads this week to much fanfare - 70 million signups in 2 days is no joke. The memes and posts on both the new platform and Twitter are hilarious — everyone seems to be having fun on text-social apps again (who woulda thought) and even Jack Dorsey (who’s founded competitor BlueSky) wryly tweeted “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones".
Since Threads is using your IG network as a base, my first thought when I signed up was how my Follow Graph is so different from my Follow Graph on Twitter. I might be in the minority, but I use these apps for very different purposes, even though I’m almost an Hourly Active User on both.
This is a clear differentiator that Meta seems to want: IG Chief Adam Mosseri tweeted (“threaded”?) that the app’s focus will not be on hard news and politics but on “conversations”. Unless this is changed (which I have full faith in Meta’s capabilities to execute - reminded of IG onboarding celebs as recounted in the brilliant book No Filter) I personally feel this will end up being the app’s Achilles Heel. Part of the reason I love Twitter is I get to eavesdrop on thoughts and conversations from titans like Scott Galloway, Edward Luce, Bill Gurley, Sucheta Dalal, Praveen Swami, Ajai Shukla and so on (though of course, these posts are very much curated for public consumption). But, as things stand, Threads and Twitter are, at least as publicly stated, targeted for different use cases.
And that’s fair. Social Networks have been around for 2 decades, give or take (and not counting Six Degrees), and we’re still coming up with new ones. And despite that snark tweet by Jack Dorsey, I believe there’s still room for more platforms and evolution. To put it in context, we’ve been on social networks for less than half the current average human lifespan. Compared to recent technology, the ‘mass’ internet has been around for at least twice more time, and it’s been nearly 200 years since we’ve had globally interconnected communications with telegrams (granted telegrams were accessible to only the elite, but social media too has been accessed only by a global elite - it’s just the base of the elite that has expanded).
The point here, as famous vlogger and polymath (as per my opinion) Hank Green has posited, is that when it comes to Social Networks, we’re all still just babies. For the first time ever we’ve got real time conversation anyone can listen to and contribute to (and even shitpost on). This is a revolution bigger than even the Printing Press, and we all at some level don’t know what we’re doing.
The Human Need to Feel Superior
Further as Hank mentions, part of what makes anyone anywhere at any point in human history want to contribute to any conversation is that it makes one feel superior (shitposting included). He even cites Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation as feeding into that psyche. And this is true - think of people supporting Trump who agreed with the thought that the system seemed rigged and the powers that be deserved comeuppance, or the billions online in India who support Modi with the thought that the ‘established dynasty’ or ‘global north’ needs to be shown its place.
(The Threads app itself taps into this by adding a FOMO component - everyone who signs up gets a rank, an order of joining which is publicly displayed by default on their Instagram profiles to nudge folks to get in on a lower number signalling “I was here before you”.)
Wanting to feel superior isn’t of course in itself a problem. Much of human history including our best moments have been motivated by greed or fear - from the explorations of Columbus to the Moon Landings to even the creation of the Internet itself (a DARPA project created to keep communications intact in case of a nuclear strike during the Cold War). The problem with Social Networks is the resultant echo chambers and practices like creating or sharing fake news for attention and to, yup, feel superior.
“Live in the Future and build what’s missing”
Which brings me to what I personally think the future should look like when it comes to Social Networks, and how to “build what’s missing”, as Paul Graham says.
It’s already established that the internet and social networks are here to stay. But what if we could build a global social network that forms the backbone of all society including provisions of goods and services. This isn’t the first time this idea has been thought of: see The Network State. But additionally, if this network were to form be the base of future society, it should also give everyone:
(a) an equal starting point
(b) the opportunity to move ahead in the ‘network’ due to actions and the risk of missing out due to inaction
Or, taking a page from philosophy and John Rawls’ thought experiment, the Original Position:
In the original position, you are asked to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society. This choice is made from behind a “veil of ignorance”, which prevents you from knowing your ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially in Rawls’ formulation, your or anyone else’s idea of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally
What this means is a Social Network that isn’t based on your current standing — you can’t just port followers from other networks or buy them, or even have a fan following based on an existing celebrity status. Everyone starts from zero, with everyone having different opportunities to accelerate. Let me explain.
Today Mark Zuckerberg already has over 2 million followers on Threads. That’s fair: it’s his platform, he’s a celeb in his own right and was a child prodigy anyway. This is fine for a network built solely around ideas, conversation, personal branding etc. But he also donates a lot to charity. What if he, as a billionaire, could virtue signal (“hey I’m SUPERIOR to that other billionaire who doesn’t donate as much”) his donations on a publicly accessible, decentralised ledger, which in turn boosts his ranking on a social network built directly on top of that ledger. That’s what the future should be — a network where it’s not about your follower count but your rank which in turn is based on real world actions.
And of course, this doesn’t leave out non-billionaires. Think about the complete opposite of Zuckerberg — someone with more time than money. That person could spend a few hours every weekend say working at a school for slum children and earn karma points there — “Hey I don’t have a lot of money but I’m SUPERIOR to my peers who just binge Netflix all weekend”. The idea is to tap into the lizard brain of wanting to feel superior and to connect people and reward them in a way that also furthers society and our Social Contract.
Lastly, being on a blockchain means if your actions help others on the blockchain, you could conceivably measure the snowball effect of your initial action. Say a person who helps educate an underprivileged child. That child goes on to, say, become a successful entrepreneur and provide employement to hundreds of others. Since the child’s accomplishments can be linked directly back to the help the person gave, that person’s rank is retroactively boosted as the child succeeds.
A lot of wishful thinking here of course and a lot more to be designed — verification of actions, whose blockchain do we build on top of etc. But the idea people are people, we’ll always want to feel superior. This is a system that incentivises the right actions, not the wrong words, that is publicly available and verifiable at any time, and where the impact of participants actions can be further measured and verified.
Cold Start
Of course the biggest question as with any network will be how to start the network. Which makes me think of my first experience with Twitter:
It was during the 2009 Mumbai monsoon rains which flooded and effectively paralysed the city. I was sitting in my office along with some colleagues whose families were travelling into and around the city, and posting questions with #MumbaiRains and asking if certain roads and train stations were still functioning and getting real time responses from multiple strangers and relaying that to said colleagues. At that moment, my 22 year old self felt like the ‘guy in the chair’ in superhero comics and films, coordinating and passing on real on-the-ground info to people who needed it to get out of dire situations.
Which is why the most obvious solution seems to be to start with a network with on-the-street news reporters, or rather - convert anyone into an on-the-ground reporter. This is especially true since as mentioned at the start, it seems to be a space that Meta’s Adam Mosseri (for fair reasons) doesn’t want to actively promote. However, in a post-truth era this seems to be the biggest gap that needs to be filled.
Picture this: an earthquake devastates a city, local officials are rushing to the affected areas and people want to just help by donating and also going to the affected ground. Using a smartphone’s GPS stamp and other sensors, people at the actual site can be verified as being there and inform everyone on a single platform what is needed from who and what is not. Consequently, people get to help by sending supplies like food and clothing to the right places rather than overburdening any single point, further local officials get access to cameras of those at the affected areas and can coordinate with heavier equipment and rescue efforts, all in real time and with full transparency.
That’s an extreme example, but even for local issues this can be utilised. If, as in India, there is a huge drive to say build toilets, any random person with a smartphone can visit a site of a claimed construction and take a photo (again tagged and verified by sensors) to either debunk or confirm any politician’s or contractor’s claim. And on it goes. Again this level of crowdsourcing is already being done by apps like GoogleMaps, albeit for use cases like Restaurant and Location reviews. The idea is to create a reliable on-the-ground source of information accessible to all.
Again, this is already the mission of Twitter as re-envisioned by the new CEO — to “become the world’s most accurate real-time information source and a global town square for communication.” This is also, to his credit, what Elon Musk has always thought about Twitter, and at some level worked towards. But what we need is to start a network that encompasses actions, not just words and ideas, and build it at scale and transparently over a blockchain (or other such technology).
In the end, it turns out that flying cars aren’t what we need in the future, as studies have shown. As a smart man once said: “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation”. Despite some roadbumps, I’m optimistic about Social Networks overall, we’re just still new to it. We need more connection in this world, not less. And as the song goes, ‘we’ve only just begun’.
