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---
slug: social-media
title: "Social Media"
date: "2022-11-23T12:03:11-04:00"
draft: true
---
I've had these entries in [/etc/hosts][] on my personal laptop for
years, but they seem germane and prescient in light of the [latest
social media privacy fiasco][]:
```sh
> egrep 'fb|face' /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 m.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.net
```
I realize this isn't a viable option for most people, but it works for
me because I don't have a Facebook account. At a minimum I recommend
that everyone install [uBlock Origin][].
I had a Twitter account several years ago, although I haven't touched it
in a long time. It's unlikely that I will, given the recent change in
ownership, content moderation deterioriration, user exodus, and [likely
impending collapse][].
In general I have a fairly dim view of centralized, ad-supported social
media. Social media is:
* **Predatory**: Social media users' personal data and their
relationships are the *product*, not the customer. The actual
customers are advertisers, [data brokers][], [oppressive
regimes][facebook-abortion], and other [malign interests][].
* **Inflammatory**: Ad-supported social media algorithms are tuned to
prioritize engagement rather than curate interesting content (more
eyeballs = more ads). Our brains are [hard-wired to react
strongly][tfas] with inflammatory content or when [someone is wrong on
the Internet][xkcd-386].
* **Toxic**: Fertile ground for disinformation, misinformation,
harassment, abuse, and fraud.
None of these observations are novel, and they're not limited to social
media:
> Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search
> engines is advertising. **The goals of the advertising business model
> do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.** For
> example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for
> cellular phone is “The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver
> Attention”, a study which explains in great detail the distractions
> and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving.
> This search result came up first because of its high importance as
> judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation
> importance on the web [Page, 98].
>
> It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing
> cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our
> system returned to its paying advertisers. **For this type of reason and
> historical experience with other media [Bagdikian, 83], we expect that
> advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards
> the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. ...
> Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide
> poor quality search results. … In general, it could be argued from the
> consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer
> advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want.
> This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the
> existing search engines**
>
> [The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Appendix
> A: Advertising and Mixed Motives][google], Sergey Brin and Lawrence
> Page (h/t [The Age of PageRank is Over][]).
So what's the solution? My personal preference would be:
* **Federated**: Distributed, no central authority, and based on open
standards (like web, and email).
* **Non-commercial** or at least, users are the customers rather than
advertisers.
* **Identity Portability**: Users should be able to migrate to a
different provider and retain their post history, identity, and social
network.
* **Strong Encryption**: storage, transport ([TLS 1.3][]), and
end-to-end for direct messages.
* **Data Privacy**: The industry has repeatedly demonstrated it's
inability to properly handle personal data, so this needs to be
regulated by something comparable to [GDPR][], enforced by a strong
federal agency with harsh fines for non-compliance.
[Mastadon][] looks promising. I haven't used it, but I have read through
the [ActivityPub][], [WebFinger][], [Activity Streams][] specifications.
1. scalability
2. discoverability
3. weak encryption
4. complicated specification
5. no end-to-end encryption
### Further Reading
* [Weapons of Math Destruction][]
* [Thinking, Fast and Slow][tfas]
[/etc/hosts]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)
"Operating system file that maps hostnames to IP addresses."
[latest social media privacy fiasco]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/22/23471842/facebook-hr-block-taxact-taxslayer-info-sharing
"Tax sites sharing tax information with Facebook"
[xkcd-386]: https://xkcd.com/386/
"Somebody is wrong on the internet"
[tfas]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
"Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman"
[facebook-abortion]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/sneaky-ways-cops-could-access-data-to-widely-prosecute-abortions-in-the-us/
"Ars Technica: Sneaky ways cops could access data to widely prosecute abortions in the US"
[data brokers]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_broker
"Company that specializes in collecting personal data."
[malign interests]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Data_scandal
"Cambridge Analytica"
[likely impending collapse]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/22/twitter-advertiser-exodus-musk/
"Washington Post: Advertisers are dropping Twitter. Musk can’t afford to lose any more."
[weapons of math destruction]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction
"Weapons of Math Destruction, by Cathy O'Neil"
[google]: http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf
"The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page"
[the age of pagerank is over]: https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over
"The Age of PageRank is Over"
[ublock origin]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin
"uBlock Origin: Browser extension for content filtering, including ad blocking"
[gdpr]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation
"General Data Protection Regulation"
[tls 1.3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#TLS_1.3
"Transport Layer Security, version 1.3"
[mastadon]: https://joinmastodon.org/
"Federated social media."
[activitypub]: https://activitypub.rocks/
"ActivityPub specification and implementation details."
[fuck-rsa]: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/07/08/fuck-rsa/
"Trail of Bits: Seriously, stop using RSA"
[webfinger]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7033
"RFC7033: WebFinger specification"
[activity streams]: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/
"W3c Activity Streams specification"
|
