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What does a Good social media platform look like?


MSC

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Firstly, by 'good' I mean conducts itself ethically. 

There are a few aspects to address with this question. 

Answers ought to take into account;

1. How this platform monetises and to what extent it does so? Does it just cover it's operating costs and staff man hours or does it make a profit? To extend this question, what does it do with this profit?

2. What does it do with users data? Does it have ads driven by the selling off of marketing data? Another question buried there, is who owns data pertaining to an internet user? The user or the data gatherer?

3. How does it manage moderation and censorship? Bare minimum adherence to the law or sets of guiding principles the users themselves have a hand in making? Those are just the two options based on opposite ends of a spectrum, I am not positing that as a binary choice. 

A programmer friend and I were discussing this at length the other day, neither of us believe any of the current platforms do enough to be ethical. 

Currently, I am grounding my perspective of the good, as that which is a net positive for life, biologically/psychologically. Feel free to critique that though. I get that rational meaning through conveyance, is a difficulty that most take for granted, so if I've not made sense at any point feel free to say. Happy to try to elaborate more when I see where people are at with this. 

I feel that if I don't address those 3 aspects of this question, then I won't be able to be certain of an answer to the main question. 

Thanks in advance, for any thoughts you contribute towards this discussion.

The concerns which led me to this question, stem from the harmful consequences wrought by platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter etc. From screen addiction, to the spreading of misinformation and either a lack of justifiable censorship or over-censorship. 

I personally feel, that going forward, the discussion around this question is only going to get more prominent and that it is one we should all be asking ourselves and each other as much as we can. 

Optional homework: If you would prefer not to comment, I request that you have this discussion with at least two people you are comfortable with, then ask them to do the same. 

For those of you who would like to know moore about the original version and inspiration of this question... You just got a hint. If the hint was missed, The Heavy have a song titled after the question. 

Peace.

Edited by MSC
Trying to sound less arrogant
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3 hours ago, Prometheus said:

Related to points one and two is to what metrics are any algorithms optimising? Is it simply ad revenue for something like facebook, is it view time or click rate for something like youtube. And, perhaps more important, are the metrics transparent?

It's a nudge, in a direction we don't have too follow; we just want too...

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