I don't have a facebook account and don't use twitter. Despite this, every day I read news about forced removal of publications and blocking of accounts in popular social networks.
Are social networks knowingly taking responsibility for my posts? Will this behavior change in the future? Can a social network give us our content, and what changes are required in social networks for this? How will possible changes affect the IT market?
Different goals of social network and forum
Social networks appeared as a development of forums, and they, in turn, were created to attract and retain people on the website of the company that owned this forum. The person had to remember the name of this company, this site, and return to it again. That's why the forums kept a staff of moderators: it was content that was associated with their company, and it had to be clean.
Social networks, on the other hand, no longer retain a subscriber, since they are already well-known. They live off highly targeted, personalized advertising.
For a social network, it is important to identify the interests of the account, and in accordance with them, show him the most appropriate advertising. The task of leaving a person on this particular site, as was the case with forms, is no longer relevant, a person will return to Facebook anyway, he remains there because of the unique set of services that the largest social network provides.
I recognize this coexistence as quite mutually beneficial.
Responsibility and ownership
β¦ but for some reason, like the ancient forums, without exception, social networks still take responsibility for the texts that are in it.
Gun manufacturers are not responsible for the killings. Car manufacturers are not responsible for drivers. Even parents at some point cease to be responsible for their children, and the landlord is only in the most extreme case and very indirectly responsible for the consequences of the actions of the tenant. But the social network, for some reason, is responsible for the content. Why?
In all cases of sale, there is a transfer of ownership, this means a transfer of responsibility, just as the birth of a child means taking responsibility for him for the next eighteen years. Everywhere reigns (should) market self-regulation, and only Facebook keeps its subscribers for small children, and still can not let them go. Maybe they are waiting until the very first accounts are twenty-one years old?
Exclusive rights of the social network to the content
Okay, why does a social network need exclusive rights to my content? She either leaves it as is or blocks it. The social network does not edit my articles. What's the point of owning my content? I can transfer some of the publishing rights, but ownership - why? The owner is responsible. And it's an incredible expense to follow such an uncountable number of publications. The question is, do they have to do it, or do they want to do it?
I can't explain why possession is needed. But if it is not needed, then why do they keep it? Give your social media to the people.
Multiple Sites as Social Network Cells
Imagine that instead of one social network, many different sites have appeared, each of which represents one or more social network accounts. One large social network has been divided into many cells connected to each other. Ownership problem solved: the owner of each site is responsible for its content, and has all the features of the social network right on their own site. The social network is responsible for the technical part of the issue, can display its ads, and provides only the engine.
Self-regulation in the field of content moderation
The social network no longer needs any moderating functions at all. Let state services and public organizations do this if they need it. And they will appear.
This is how I see it now: the World Court satisfied the claim of the public organization βIndependent Society of Facebook Moderators For the Love of the Fatherlandβ against the owners of Internet resources, individuals, and decided to cancel the registration of such and such domain names on the Internet.β Optionally, with the payment of a fine to activists of sexual minorities and the confiscation of the cache of search engines in favor of law enforcement agencies.
This is how it should be, and sooner or later it will be. You can't register a domain without a passport. On your domain porridge - you answer. A completely market-oriented, self-regulating, reliable structure.
Reason for introducing new technologies
Okay, but all this, apparently, is a matter of some future technology? Everyone thought about how to unite social networks and what a breakthrough it would be. Never shot, because no one needs it. Who needs to blur control over the vast advertising audience?
Iβm talking about something else, how to remove the army of hired moderators from at least one social network, stop forcing social networks to make excuses for content not produced by them, stop paying fines, sue, endure reputational costs, and, as a result, receive a decrease in capitalization? After all, giving up ownership of the content promises profit, and as soon as it comes to money, big money, everything immediately starts to move.
How a distributed social network works
But how to implement it? How to combine heterogeneous sites into a single system? In order for the search to work there, and messages to reach immediately, and also ads to be shown? ..
Very simple. I will even say more, it has already been implemented. Over ten years ago.
Everyone, of course, knows such a site as Mamba. This is the largest dating network. But few people know that you can have your own Mamba, completely free. To do this, you need to perform two simple steps, register on the Mamba website as a partner, and set up your domain's NS records for Mamba's IP addresses.
Of course, you remember how during the boom of dating sites, there were dozens of them, but somehow they all were more or less suspiciously similar to each other. So, all these sites are two or three bases with such affiliate programs. The point is that you are promoting your dating site at your own expense, the general database of profiles is growing and this is good for the integrator, and you get quite a lot of money if paid features are bought from your site. In my opinion, it was at least 30% of each purchase - a very good percentage.
Technical implementation of cells of a multi-domain social network
We digress, but we saw that the described scheme is not only feasible, but has been working for a long time. A person registers a domain with their own real name. Directs this domain to a social network (of course, special one-button services will appear for this). Anyone who visits this domain sees a regular Facebook or contact page. But now all the articles that are written on this site are of a well-defined authorship of an individual or a company that owns the domain, which are responsible for the content.
Self-regulatory moderation on social networks and the development of a related service market
Is there an unwanted comment on the site? We remove it ourselves. The article is shown on multiple account sites and the comment is flagged as inappropriate by multiple owners based on certain criteria? Deleted automatically. No time to monitor your site? Please, CJSC "Postochist" and other organizations provide content moderation services for social networking sites. Organizations provide legal services for advising on the eligibility of posting content on account sites. There are several free projects of automatic moderators on Github, but elite services are provided by companies that use only highly qualified moderators with philological and legal higher education at the same time (!).
The development of new areas of activity and the economic effect of a simple solution
Fake accounts will die on their own: it will become too expensive to keep such accounts. The content will become much better, the size of social networks will decrease much, but you will be sure that every person who is there is responsible for his words. And a few more important points.
There will be new areas of activity that will open new jobs in the IT field, and a lot. The practice of blocking sites through the world court legitimizes this process and spurs the development of the judicial system. The market will demand cheap automatic moderators, and this will give impetus to the development of artificial intelligence in the field of text understanding. Yes, this is also developing now, but with the launch of account sites it will become massive, since it will concern absolutely everyone. And this, in turn, will affect the quality of the search ... And very, very much in life.
The domain name market will rise very strongly, and there will be a widespread transition to IPv6. Who will undertake to calculate the economic effect of such a simple decision?
Private technical issues of a multi-domain social network
Let's go a little further and solve some particular issues. Well, a person is logged in on his site, but if he went to another account site, then this is a different domain, and he will not be logged in there? .. Cross-domain requests have long ceased to be a taboo. Google tracks you even on different computers, do you notice that the same ads are shown to you both at home and at work? ..
When a person owns a site, he can do whatever he wants on it. But in the case of account sites, it does not affect the design of the site in any way, and cannot personalize it. And if, on the contrary, you give the site to the owner for hosting and give him the opportunity to connect the social network as a module, who will guarantee that he will not block ads? ..
Distributed social network account site templates
I have long wanted to use the Contact site as a content manager for a regular site, but I donβt like that you canβt change anything at all in appearance. GitHub site is missing.
Account sites will provide site layouts that will be loaded through the account control panel. On Contact, in the very embryo, there is already a semblance of this function.
Site templates will have special places for advertising. If such places are not indicated in the downloadable template, the site template will not be accepted for publication. Of course, it will be possible to load different templates for different pages, and add static pages. Or maybe itβs not necessary, maybe it will be possible to host the main site on a second-level domain, and the account site on a subdomain. There will probably be some variation of both. For example, a large account site can only be hosted on a second-level domain.
The appearance of site-accounts will almost completely destroy the market for content management systems. And I won't say it's bad.
Implementer
Clearly, to implement the described, you need to be at least a Contact. It is necessary not to launch a new network, but to slightly change the behavior of existing ones. Technical changes are small. All you need is will and money. Who will take it?..
State regulation
Over time, social networks themselves will provide domain names to choose from, and ordinary accounts will become a thing of the past. After that, it will not be possible to register an account without a passport. Since this gives strong regulatory power, the idea will be seized upon by the public services, and after that the process will become irreversible.
The black market and the rise of the general level of responsibility and security
Of course, this will also give rise to a corresponding black market sector. The sale of illegal mobile numbers will be complemented by the offer of fake account sites. But this will also have a positive effect: since a person is aware of the responsibility for the content, he will begin to think more about the security of his data, which in general will raise the level of security on the network.
Further cyclic development
Naturally, one can predict an increase in volumes in anonymous communication methods. Will there be a new alternative Facebook? It is unlikely that any of the companies will not want to take on such responsibility. Social networks will be divided into sectors controlled only by the internal community.
But this will not lead to decline. Firstly, freely distributed social networking engines will appear for the Internet, which will set a new standard in their construction. And secondly, the development of technology will lead to the emergence and spread of a fundamentally new communication environment, which will be based on new protocols, and perhaps it will not even be quite the Internet. Or not the internet at all.
Vocabulary
In the process of writing this article, the following neologisms were born:
- "site-account", or siteacc
- one button service
- multidomain social network,
- public organization "Independent society of moderators"
- search engine cache confiscation.
Perhaps, after a certain number of years, some of these words will become as widely known as social networks are now.
Source: habr.com