Yes, 'The Algorithm' REALLY IS Like That

[jian]

Bluesky is trying to run a social media site without a predatory algorithm. They're still running on venture capital at this point, but they're claiming they're going to go with subscriptions to help fund the whole site.

ENWorld has those as well, although it also makes money off of advertising, which I don't think Bluesky currently intends to do.

Mastodon is doing something similar, but that's basically a network of independent hobbyists lashing their personal networks together to create a full-sized one, and those tend to be funded out of pocket by the owners or through membership drives.

In any case, yes, there are folks giving it a try.

I agree advertising seems a decent model (and paying to not have it or for it to be less intrusive seems reasonable).

Sadly I think Bluesky is just early Twitter - great now and running on fumes but once they need to make a profit they'll have to either go full swamp or charge us for the privilege.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Believe it or not, we’ve been through that phase. Over the last 26 years we’ve tried a LOT of things!

Speaking seriously, I need to subscribe. I'm on here enough! And I joined the Yog-Sothoth.com Patreon way too late, and that was another site I frequently visited.

 

[delericho]

Age verification is pretty straightforward not sure why losing access to under 16s would make you close? Irrespective of that we have entire generations of children raised on a daily diet of social media now becoming parents. It’s not pretty. We’ll have to see how the Australia system works but I wouldn’t be surprised if more countries follow soon. UK included.

The problem is implementing age verification that isn't trivially easy for 15-year-olds to bypass while at the same time maintaining appropriate levels of data security and privacy.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sadly I think Bluesky is just early Twitter - great now and running on fumes but once they need to make a profit they'll have to either go full swamp or charge us for the privilege.

We'll see. I would think the same, but Jay Graber and company built it to make it impossible for it to follow the Twitter or Facebook model too closely.

Even if this early Twitter period only lasts for a few years, it's nice to have it back while it lasts.

 

[Staffan]

Age verification is pretty straightforward not sure why losing access to under 16s would make you close?

Is it? How do you propose to verify users' ages?

Do they have to upload some form of ID? How do you deal with IDs from all the world's nations? How do you verify that the ID is actually the user's? And how do you make sure to keep them secure from data breaches, like e.g. Discord recently suffered (article here)?

Or do you perhaps rely on some form of third-party verification? How many of those exist that work internationally? Or do you expect a site like ENWorld to use each individual country's verification services?

I mean, if a site like ***** chooses to block access to users in the UK (BBC article) rather than comply with age verification regulations, do you really think ENWorld has the resources to do it?

 

[Ryujin]

And it’s greatly appreciated, thank you.

It does take me to another thought, which is that are benign social media companies such as EN World or other forums profitable? If not, why would anyone run them apart from the love of the game and community? If they charged a tiny subscription to stay solvent, how many people would still use them?

I think we can all remember when some of the more toxic social media platforms used to be more benign, but AFAIK they weren’t making any profit then, and in retrospect they were being run as loss leaders to build a user base to prepare for more profitable approaches such as data extraction. Perhaps they shouldn’t be run at all if that’s the only way they can stay afloat.

Yet another question is, what would a world without Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, Bluesky etc look like? It’s easy for me to say “more like the 90s when I grew up” but that’s obviously not true. It means, for instance, that nobody can play the influencer social media lottery. It means that it will be a lot harder for some communities to find each other online. What would we lose and how can it be preserved?

One of my friend groups has been using Discord to keep in touch across Canada and the US, and even Europe and Japan, on occasion, as people shift from job to job. With Discord's recent announcement (later walked back) that they were going to partner with Palantir for facial recognition, one of them spun up a server and set up a private forum for us. Discord might not be going forward with that relationship, but the trust is gone. The server is staying.

 

[Ryujin]

Is it? How do you propose to verify users' ages?

Do they have to upload some form of ID? How do you deal with IDs from all the world's nations? How do you verify that the ID is actually the user's? And how do you make sure to keep them secure from data breaches, like e.g. Discord recently suffered (article here)?

Or do you perhaps rely on some form of third-party verification? How many of those exist that work internationally? Or do you expect a site like ENWorld to use each individual country's verification services?

I mean, if a site like ***** chooses to block access to users in the UK (BBC article) rather than comply with age verification regulations, do you really think ENWorld has the resources to do it?

Discord was talking about using Palantir to do age verification either through scanned government ID, or live AI facial recognition to verify.

 

[Staffan]

Discord was talking about using Palantir to do age verification either through scanned government ID, or live AI facial recognition to verify.

I believe that was Persona, not Palantir. But that's still linked to Satan (aka Peter Thiel).

 

[TheSword]

Is it? How do you propose to verify users' ages?

Do they have to upload some form of ID? How do you deal with IDs from all the world's nations? How do you verify that the ID is actually the user's? And how do you make sure to keep them secure from data breaches, like e.g. Discord recently suffered (article here)?

Or do you perhaps rely on some form of third-party verification? How many of those exist that work internationally? Or do you expect a site like ENWorld to use each individual country's verification services?

I mean, if a site like ***** chooses to block access to users in the UK (BBC article) rather than comply with age verification regulations, do you really think ENWorld has the resources to do it?

I think EN World would have to do what EN World had to do. But as much as I like posting here, our desire to chat shiz about stuff isn’t worth the widespread harm to children and young adults caused by social media.

Age verification already exists in law for UK for some sites. It’s a legal mandate. You can say that it’s possible with effort to get around that but it’s still a worthy requirement. Necessity is the mother invention. It safe age restriction becomes a requirement to operate then a system of implementing it becomes a marketable product.

Don’t forget that ***** was being used to disseminate dangerously illegal images. EN world isn’t (unless I’m missing something). The amount of scrutiny would be directly proportional to the risk.

 

[Cergorach]

One of my friend groups has been using Discord to keep in touch across Canada and the US, and even Europe and Japan, on occasion, as people shift from job to job. With Discord's recent announcement (later walked back) that they were going to partner with Palantir for facial recognition, one of them spun up a server and set up a private forum for us. Discord might not be going forward with that relationship, but the trust is gone. The server is staying.

We're using Discord for voice chat during our Foundry VTT sessions, and when this popped up in it's usual hysterical reporting, I remained calm and read what was going on and what services were going to be affected. None of the services we were using were affected by the age verification thing, so no worries from us.

The reality with any service is, you use it for what it can do for you now, not what it can or cannot possibly do in the future. Yes setting up communication servers I can do, but getting a good minimal delay communication channel that isn't p2p to literally the other side of the world requires a lot of additional setup, and probably costs. Discord was doing that for free for us. I've always suspected Discord would be a temporary thing, but it's already lasted 2.5 years, longer then I initially expected... And when it eventually does blow up (for whatever reason, I'll look at the available technology then, which has often improved significantly since the initial use case...

The age verification thing is generally proposed by governments before they have actually thought out any practical way it would work. And often they don't even bother with that at all or it takes forever to be implemented in a workable format. You want a workable online way to verify age, then the government needs to implement a digital ID beforehand. And simple API solutions so that it can be easily integrated into the solutions that you want to check age.

As an example, if you want children of 16+ to ID themselves, you need to institute compulsory IDs for children. When I grew up that wasn't the case, it's been the case for decades, but that doesn't help the online situation at all.