Thread · 9 tweets · 22 Nov 2020

Like @swodinsky I worry about this. Like it or not, the great equaliser of access is advertising. Adblocking is a privilege, subscribing is a privilege. But because the digital world was built by privileged people we got advertising wrong. Or ignored & let others get it wrong.🧵

For the first few decades of the Internet, the idea that it could have commercial use was shunned. I sort of get the draw, if I squint right, but let's face it: that's rich people thinking and it's privileged as fuck.

So we built this amazing worldwide information thing, but we spent zero time working on how to make it sustainable. It's supposed to run on... charity? Goodwill? Some guy in Nebraska?

Naturally, models emerged to fill that void. They're not great. They fall in two main groups: aristocratic and totalitarian.

The aristocratic model is subscriptions. People who are rich enough can pay for access, and that subsidises some crumbs that others get as freemium, hearsay, bypassing paywalls, etc. The content is the best, though.

The totalitarian model is what you get from Google, Facebook, etc. and a bunch of smaller fiefdoms. The glop is free, but you have to hand over all privacy and independent agency is discouraged. (See thread below tweets.berjon.com/1328469727593852928)

The totalitarian system doesn't care about quality, it only cares that you stay in the system and its goal is to organise everything *for* you. MummAI knows best!

I use these words as intended: the best but the few; a single central system to organise all the world's information/connections/commerce.

There are in fact other options, but we'll only get them if we work to hash them out on purpose. I think the key idea is this: attention is a commons. We're need governance tailored towards the attention commons. How do we build monetisation and recommendations for that?