More than a week ago now, I had a great conversation on a podcast, and the host mentioned Stephen Fry and his stance on social media. Long after the podcast episode was over, I decided to look into it, and boy was it worth it.
This may be something most people already forgot, but when the whole idea of Social Media came about, Stephen Fry was one of the important names, important minds, I should say, that took advantage of the new town square.
There are two videos, that I would encourage everyone to listen to, that show Stephen's thoughts in the early days.
You could say in the beginning he was a big proponent of social media, he was excited for the revolution of information, and he worked hard at not allowing his biases to negate the obvious advantages of the democratization of knowledge.
But then...
This is precisely the part that I find fascinating, and one that I wish more people would know. The ideal town square, the beautiful idea of finally being able to listen to the vox populi, all that rotted away.
When a business model was introduced into the mix, when the companies that once owned the mouthpieces adjusted for the paradigm shift, they found very quickly the best way to regain control of the cash flow.
Like with many things online, Social Media became plagued with Ads. To a point you can't blame them, since maintaining a platform like twitter can't be done for cheap, but it does make a great idea become a husk of nothingness.
In order to maximize profits, to win the rat race, the companies behind the social media platforms we all use, found themselves working diligently in maximizing one thing, and one thing only: engagement.
Above any other metric they could possibly mine for, if they can make us addicted to using the platform, if they can make us stay for hours upon end, they can sell our attention to companies who are attempting to sell you things.
I sense there might be one or two people out there who are tempted to call me out. I mean, I use social media every single day after all. As a matter of fact, I'm using it right now, to type this message of critique, but, Is there any other way?
Unlike the voices out there who've succumbed to a blackpill flavored way of experiencing the world, I happen to think all is not loss. The retaking of the town's square starts with awareness, which is why I'm motivated to write this to begin with, but it ends with true decentralization.
I suspect you might know where I'm going with this, and yes you are correct. This is precisely why I can both say that, Stephen is absolutely correct, but he probably hasn't heard of Web3, and I'm sure he's never heard of us, of what a blockchain like Hive can solve.
MenO
