Our Digital Platforms -- What We Want to Regulate For (Not Just Against) [Preliminary Draft]

This is now superseded by an updated and expanded post:
Regulating our Platforms -- A Deeper Vision (Working Draft)

Preliminary Draft:  This post is an initial summary of my comments at this event, as sent on 10/20/19 to some of the speakers and attendees. (I am writing an expanded post to supersede this.)
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Summary and Expansion of Dick Reisman’s comments on attending GMF 10/17/19 event:

The Debate Over a New Digital Platform Agency: Developing Digital Authority and Expertise

I very much support the proposals for a New Digital Platform Authority (as detailed in the excellent background items[*] cited on the event page) and offer some innovative perspectives.  I welcome dialog and opportunities to participate in and support related efforts. 

(My background is complementary to most of the attendees -- diverse roles in media-tech, as a manager, entrepreneur, inventor, and angel investor.  I became interested in hypermedia and collaborative social decision support systems around 1970, and observed the regulation of The Bell System, IBM, Microsoft, the Internet, and cable TV from within the industry.  As a successful inventor with over 50 software patents that have been widely licensed to serve billions of users, I have proven talent for seeing what technology can do for people.  Extreme disappointment about the harmful misdirection of recent developments in platforms and media has spurred me to continue work on this theme on a pro-bono basis.)  

My general comment is that for tech to serve democracy, we not only need to regulate to limit monopolies and other abuses, but also need to regulate with a vision of what tech should do for us -- to better enable regulation to facilitate that, and to recognize the harms of failing to do so.  If we don’t know what we should expect our systems to do, it is hard to know when or how to fix them.  The harm Facebook does becomes far more clear when we understand what it could do – in what ways it could be “bringing people closer together,” not just that it is actually driving them apart.  That takes a continuing process of thinking about the technical architectures we desire, so competitive innovation can realize and evolve that vision in the face of rapid technology and market development.

More specifically, I see architectural designs for complex systems as being most effective when built on adaptive feedback control loops that are extensible to enable emergent solutions as contexts, needs, technologies, and market environments change.  That is applicable in various forms to all the strategies I am suggesting (and to technology regulation in general).

I cited the Bell System regulation as a case in point that introduced well architected modularity in the Carterfone Decision (open connections via a universal jack, much like modern API’s), followed by the breakup into local and long-distance and manufacturing, and the later introduction of number portability.  This resonated as reflecting not only the wisdom of regulators, but expert vision of the technical architecture needed, specifically what points of modularity (interoperability) would enable innovation.  (Of course the Bell System emerged as a natural monopoly growing out of an earlier era of competing phone systems that did not interoperate.)  The modular architecture of email is another very relevant case in point (one that did not require regulation).

I noted three areas where my work suggests how to add more of that dimension to the excellent work in those reports.  One is a fundamental problem of structure, and the other two are problems of values that reinforce one another.  (The last one applies not only to the platforms, but to the fundamental challenge of sustaining news services in a digital world.)  All of these are intended not as point solutions, but as ongoing processes that involve continuing adaptation and feedback, so that the solutions are emergent as technology and competitive developments rapidly advance.

1.  System and business structure -- Modular architecture for flexibility and extensibility.  The heart of systems architecture is well-designed modularity, the separation of elements that can interoperate yet be changed in at will -- that seems central to regulation as well – especially to identify and manage exclusionary bottlenecks/gateways.  At a high level, the e-mail example is very relevant to how different “user agents” such as Outlook, Apple mail, and Gmail clients can all interoperate to interconnect all users through “message transfer agents” (through the mesh of mail servers on the Internet).  A similar decoupling should be done for social media and search (for both information and shopping).

Similar modularity could usefully separate such elements as:

• Filtering algorithms – to be user selectable and adjustable, and to compete in an open market much as third-party financial analytics can plug in to work with market data feeds and user interfaces.
• Social graphs – to enable different social media user interfaces to share a user’s social graph (much like email user agent / transfer agent).
• Identity – verified / aliased / anonymous / bots could interoperate with clearly distinct levels of privilege and reputation.
• Value transfer/extraction systems – this could address data, attention, and user-generated-content and the pricing that relates to that.
• Analytics/metrics – controlled, transparent monitoring of activity for users and regulators.

This is explained in Architecting Our Platforms to Better Serve Us -- Augmenting and Modularizing the Algorithm.

2.  User-value objectives -- filtering algorithms controlled by and for users.  This is the true promise of information technology – not artificial intelligence, but the augmentation of human intelligence.

·         User value is complex and nuanced, but Google’s original PageRank algorithm for search results filtering demonstrates how sophisticated algorithms can optimize for user value by augmenting the human wisdom of crowds – they can understand user intent, and weigh implicit signals of authority and reputation derived from humans inputs at multiple levels, to find relevance in varying contexts. 

·         In search, the original PageRank signal was inward links to a Web page, taken as expressions of the value judgements of individual human webmasters regarding that page.  That has been enriched to weed out fraudulent “link farms” and other distortions and expanded in many other ways.

·         For the broader challenge of social media, I outline a generalization of the same recursive, multi-level weighting strategy in The Augmented Wisdom of Crowds: Rate the Raters and Weight the Ratings.  The algorithm ranks items (of all kinds) based on implicit and explicit feedback from users (in all available forms), partitioned to reflect communities of interest and subject domains, so that desired items bubble up, and undesired items are downranked.  This can also combat filter bubbles -- to augment serendipity and to identify “surprising validators” that might cut through biased assimilation.

·         That proposed architecture also provides for deeper levels of modularity:  to enable user control of filtering criteria, and flexible use of filtering tools from competing sources -- which users could combine and change at will, depending on the specific task at hand.  That enables continuous adaptation, emergence, and evolution, in an open, competitive market ecosystem of information and tools.

·         Filtering for user and societal value:  The objective is to allow for smart filtering that applies all the feedback signals available to provide what is valued by that the user at that time.  By allowing user selection of filtering parameters and algorithms, the filters can become increasingly well-tuned to the value systems of each user, in each community of interest, and each subject domain.

·         First amendment, Section 230, prohibited content issues, and community standards:  When done well, this filtering might largely address those concerns, greatly reducing the need for the blunt instrument of regulatory controls or censorship, and working in real time, at Internet-speed, with minimal need for manual intervention regarding specific items.  As I understand the legal issues, users could retain the right to post information without restriction (with narrow exceptions) -- if objectionable content is automatically downranked enough in any filtering process that a service provides (an automated form of moderation) to avoid sending it to users who do not want such content -- or who reside in jurisdictions that do not permit it.  Freedom of speech (posting), not freedom of delivery to others who have not invited it.  Thus Section 230 might be applied to posting, just as seemed acceptable when information was pulled from the open Web, while the added service of dissemination filtering might apply both user and governmental restrictions (as well as restrictions specific to user communities that desire such filtering) when information is pushed from social media. 

(Such methods might evolve to become a broad architectural base for richly nuanced forms of digital democracy.)

3.  Business model value objectives – who does the platform serve?  This is widely asserted to be the “original sin” of the Internet that prevents better solutions in the above two areas.  Without solving this problem, it will be very difficult to solve the other problems.  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it”  Funding of services with the ad model makes services seem free and affordable, but drives platform services to optimize for engagement, to sell ads, instead of optimizing for value to users and society.  Users are the product, not the customer, and value is extracted from the customer to serve the platforms and the advertisers.  This is totally unlike prior forms of advertising because unprecedented detail in user data and precision targeting enables messaging and behavioral manipulations at an individual level.  That has driven algorithm design and use of the services in harmful directions instead of beneficial ones.  Many have recognized this business model problem, but few see any workable solution. I suggest a novel path forward at two levels:  an incentive ratchet to force the platforms to seek solutions, and some suggested solutions mechanisms that suggest that ratchet would bear fruit in ways that are both profitable and desirable.

Ratchet the desired business model shift with a simple dial, based on a simple metric.  A very simple and powerful regulatory strategy could be to impose taxes or mandates that gradually ratchet toward the desired state. This leverages market forces and business innovation in the same way as the very successful model of the CAFE standards for auto fuel efficiency -- it leaves the details of how to meet the standard to each company. 

·         The ratchet here is to provide compelling incentives for dominant services to ensure that X% of revenue must come from users.  Such compelling taxes or mandates might be restricted to distribution services with ad revenues above some threshold level.  (Any tax or penalty revenue might be applied to ameliorate the harms.)

·         That X% could still include advertising revenue if it is quantified as a credit back to the user (a “reverse meter” much as for co-generation of electricity).  Advertising can be valuable and non-intrusive and respectful of data -- explicitly putting a price on the value transfer from the consumer incentivizes the market to achieve that. 

·         This incentivizes individual companies to shift their behavior on their own, without need for the kind of new data intermediaries (“infomediaries”) that others have proposed without success.  It could also create more favorable conditions for such intermediaries to arise.

This is explained in To Regulate Facebook and Google, Turn Users Into Customers, Who Should Pay the Piper for Facebook? (& the rest), Reverse the Biz Model! -- Undo the Faustian Bargain for Ads and Data, and A Regulatory Framework for the Internet (with Thanks to Ben Thompson).

Digital services business model issues -- for news services as well as platforms.  (Not addressed at the event.)  Many (most prominently Zuckerberg) throw up their hands at finding business models for search or social media that are not ad-funded, primarily because of affordability issues.  The path to success here is uncertain (just as the path to fuel efficient autos is uncertain).  But many innovations emerging at the margins offer reasons to believe that better solutions can be found. 

·         One central thread is the recognition that the old economics of the invisible hand fails because there is no digital scarcity for the invisible hand to ration.  We need a new way to settle on value and price.

·         The related central thread is the idea of a social contract for digital services, emerging most prominently with regard to journalism (especially investigative and local).  We must pay now, not for what has been created already, but to fund continuing creation for the future. Behavioral economics has shown that people are not homo economicus but homo reciprocans. – they want to be fair and do right, when the situation is managed to encourage win-win behaviors. 

·         Pricing for digital services can shift from one-size-fits-all, to mass-customization of pricing that is fair to each user with respect to the value they get, the services they want to sustain, and their ability to pay.  Current all-you-can-eat subscriptions or pay-per-item models track poorly to actual value.  And, unlike imposing secretive price discrimination, this value discrimination can be done cooperatively (or even voluntarily).  Important cases in point are The Guardian’s voluntary payment model, and recurring crowdfunding models like Patreon. 

·         Synergizing with this, and breaking from norms we have become habituated to, the other important impact of digital is the shift toward a Relationship Economy – shifting focus from one-shot zero-sum transactions to ongoing win-win relationships such as subscriptions and membership.  This builds cooperation and provides new leverage for beneficial application of behavioral economic nudges to support this creative social contract, in an invisible handshake.  My own work on FairPay explains this and provides methods for applying it to make these services sustainable by user payments. See this Overview with links, including journal articles with prominent marketing scholars, brief articles in HBR and Techonomy, and many blog posts.  

·         Vouchers.  The Stigler Committee proposal for vouchers might be enhanced by integration with the above methods.  Voucher credits might be integrated with subscription/membership payments to directly subsidize individual payments, and to nudge users to donate above the voucher amounts.

·         Affordability. To see how this deeper focus on value changes our thinking, consider the economics of reverse meter credits for advertising, as suggested for the ratchet strategy above.  As an attendee noted at the event, reverse metering would seem to unfairly favor the rich, since they can better afford to pay to avoid ads.  But the platforms actually earn much more for affluent users (targeted ad rates are much higher).  If prices map to the value surplus, that will tend to balance things out – if the less affluent want service to be add free, it should be less costly for them than for the affluent.

AI as a platform regulatory issue.  Discussion after the session raised the issue of regulating AI.  There is growing concern relating to concentrations of power and other abuses, including concentrations of data, bias in inference and in natural language understanding, and lack of transparency, controls, and explainability.  That suggests a similar need for a regulator that can apply specialized technical expertise that overlaps with the issues addressed here.  AI is fundamental to the workings of social media, search, and e-commerce platforms, and also has many broader applications for which pro-active regulation may be needed.

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[*Update:] Here are the cited items, plus two other excellent reports:

• Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms. Final Report, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2019).
• Unlocking Digital Competition: Report of the Digital Competition Expert Panel. Furman, Jason, et al., HM Treasury, United Kingdom (2019).
• Bringing Truth to The Internet. Kornbluh, Karen, and Ellen P Goodman, Democracy, no. 53, 2019.
• The Case for the Digital Platform Act:  Market Structure and Regulation of Digital Platforms. Feld, Harold, Roosevelt Institute, 2019.
• Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech, Masnick, Mike , Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, 2019.

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See the Selected Items tab for more on this theme.

The Great Hack - The Most Important and Scariest Film of this Century

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Live screening with David Carroll in NYC, 9/26 at 2:30

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An Unseen Digital Pearl Harbor, Dissected

The Great Hack is a film every person should see!

America and other democracies have been invaded, and subverted in ways and degrees that few appreciate.

This film (on Netflix) uncovers the layers of the Russia / Cambridge Analytica hack of the US 2020 election (and Brexit), and clearly shows how deeply our social media have been subverted as a fifth column aimed at the heart of democracy and enlightened civilization.

The Great Hack provides clarity about the insidious damage being done by our seemingly benign social media -- and still running wild because too few understand or care about our state of peril -- and because those businesses profit from enabling our attackers. It provides an excellent primer for those who have not tuned in to this, and for those who do not understand the nature of the threat.

It is a much needed wake up call that far more need more urgently to heed.

"Prof. Carroll Goes to London"

What makes this a great film, and not just an important documentary, is how it is told as a the story of a (not so) common man.

Much like Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, this is the story of a mild-mannered citizen, Professor David Carroll of The New School in NYC, who sees a problem and seeks to follow a simple quest for truth and justice (to know what data Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have on him). It traces his awakening and journey to the belly of the beast. This time it is real, and the stakes could not be higher.

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I found this film especially interesting, having met David at an event on the fake news problem in February 2017, and then at a number of subsequent events on this important theme (many under the auspices of NYC Media Lab and its director, Justin Hendix). It is a problem I have explored and offered some remedies for on this blog.

To Regulate Facebook and Google, Turn Users Into Customers

First published in Techonomy, 2/26/19 -- and more timely than ever...

There is a growing consensus that we need to regulate Facebook, Google, and other large internet platforms that harm the public in large part because they are driven by targeted advertising.  The seductive idea that we can enjoy free internet services — if we just view ads and turn over our data — has been recognized to be “the original sin” of the internet.  These companies favor the interests of the advertisers they profit from more than the interests of their billions of users.  They are powerful tools for mass-customized mind-control. Selling their capabilities to the highest bidder threatens not just consumer welfare, but society and democracy.

There is a robust debate emerging about how these companies should be regulated. Many argue for controls on data use and objectionable content on these platforms.  But poorly targeted regulation risks many adverse side-effects – for example abridging legitimate speech, and further entrenching these dominant platforms and impeding innovation by making it too costly for others to compete.

But I believe we need to treat the disease, not just play whack-a-mole with the symptoms. It’s the business model, stupid! It is widely recognized that the root cause of the problem is the extractive, ad-funded, business model that motivates manipulation and surveillance.  The answer is to require these companies to shift to revenue streams that come from their users.  Of course, shifting cold-turkey to a predominantly user-revenue-based model is hard.  But in reality, we have a simple, market-driven, regulatory method that has already proven its success in addressing a similarly challenging problem – forcing automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of the cars they make. Government has for years required staged multi-year increases in Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency. A similar strategy can be applied here.

This market-driven strategy does not mandate how to fix things. It instead mandates a measurable limit on the systems that have been shown to cause harm.  Each service provider can determine on their own how best to achieve that.  Require that X% of the revenue of any consumer data service come from its users rather than advertisers.  Government can monitor their progress, and create a timetable for steadily ratcheting up the percentage.  (This might apply only above some amount of revenues, to limit constraints on small, innovative competitors.)

It is often said of our internet platforms that “if you are not the customer, you are the product.”  This concept may oversimplify, but it is deeply powerful.  With or without detailed regulations on privacy and data use, we need to shift platform incentives by making the user become the customer, increasingly over time.

Realigning incentives for ads and data.  Advertising can provide value to users – if it is targeted and executed in a way that is non-intrusive, relevant, and useful.  The best way to make advertising less extractive of user value is by quantifying a “reverse meter” that gives users credit for their attention and data.  Some services already offer users the option to pay in order to avoid or reduce ads (Spotify is one example).  That makes the user the customer. Both advertisers and the platforms benefit by managing user attention to maximize, rather than optimize for exploitive “engagement.”

What if the mandated user revenue level is not met?  Government could tax away enough ad revenue to meet the target percentage.  That would provide a powerful incentive to address the problem.  In addition, that taxed excess ad revenue could fund mechanisms for oversight and transparency, for developing better solutions, and for remediating disinformation.

Can the platforms really shift to user revenue?  Zuckerberg has been a skeptic, but none of the big platforms has tried seriously.  When the platforms realize they must make this change, they will figure out how, even if it trims their exorbitant margins.

Users increasingly recognize that they must pay for digital services.  A system of reverse metering of ads and data use would be a powerful start.  Existing efforts that hint at the ultimate potential of better models include including crowdfunding, membership models, and cooperatives. Other emerging variations promise to be adaptive to large populations of users with diverse value perceptions and abilities to pay.

A growing focus on customer value would move us back towards leveraging a proven great strength of humanity — the deeply cooperative behavior of traditional markets.

A simple mandate requiring internet platforms to generate a growing percentage of revenue from users will not cure all ills. But it is the simplest way to drive a fundamental shift toward better corporate behavior.

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Coda, 7/24/19:

Since the original publication of this article, this issue has become even more timely, as the FTC and Justice Department begin deep investigation into the Internet giants. 

• There is growing consensus that there is a fundamental problem with the ad- and data-based business model. 
• There is also growing consensus that we must move beyond the narrow theory of antitrust that says there can be no "harm" in a free service that does not raise direct costs to consumers (but does raise indirect costs to them and limits competition). 
• But the targeted strategies for forcing a fundamental shift in business models outlined here are still not widely known or considered. 

For more information see my Open Letter to Influencers Concerned About Facebook and Other Platforms. 

• It primarily focuses on these business model issues and regulatory strategies (including the auto emissions model described here), and how FairPay offers an innovative strategy that has gained recognition for how it can generate user revenue in equitable ways that do not prevent a service like Facebook or Google from being affordable by all, even those with limited ability to pay.
• It also links to a body of work "On the deeper issues of social media and digital democracy." That includes Google-like algorithms for getting smarter about the wisdom of crowds, and structural strategies for regulation based on the specific architecture of the platforms and how power should be modularized (much as smart modularization was applied to regulating the Bell System and enabling the decades of robust innovation we now enjoy.)

Reisman in Techonomy: Business Growth is Actually Good for People. Here’s Why.

My 4th piece in Techonomy was published today:
Business Growth is Actually Good for People. Here’s Why..

Blurb:

We cannot—and should not—stop growing. Sensible people know the real task is to channel growth to serve human ends.

My opening and closing:

Douglas Rushkoff gave a characteristically provocative talk last week at Techonomy NYC – which provoked me to disagree strongly...

...Rushkoff delivers a powerful message on the need to re-center on human values. But his message would be more effective if it acknowledged the power of technology and growth instead of indiscriminately railing against it. We need a reawakening of human capitalism — and a Manhattan Project to get tech back on track. That will make us a better team human.

"Non-Binary" means "Non-Binary"...Mostly...Right?

A "gender non-binary female?"

Seeing the interview of Asia Kate Dillon on Late Night with Seth Meyers, I was struck by one statement -- one that suggests an insidious problem of binary thinking that pervades many of the current ills in our society. Dillon (who prefers the pronoun "they") reported gaining insight into their gender identity from the character description for their role in Billions as "a gender non-binary female," saying: “I just didn’t understand how those words could exist next to each other.”

What struck me was the questioning of how these words could be sensibly put together. Why would anyone ask that question? As I though more, I saw this as a perfect example of the much broader problem.

The curse of binary thinking

The question I ask is at a semantic level: how could that not be obvious? (regardless of one's views on gender identity). Doesn't the issue arise only if one interprets "female" in a binary way? I would have thought that one who identifies as "non-binary" would see beyond this conceptual trap of simplistic duality. Wouldn't a non-binary person be more non-binary in their thinking? Wouldn't it be obvious to a non-binary thinker that this is a matter of being non-binary and female, not of being non-binary or female?

It seems that binary thinking is so ingrained in our culture that we default to black and white readings when it is clear that most of life (outside of pure mathematics) is painted in shades of gray. It is common to think of some "females" as masculine, and some "males" as effeminate. Some view such terms as pejorative, but what is the reality? Why wouldn't a person presumed at birth to be female (for the usual blend of biological reasons) be able to be non-binary in a multitude of ways. Even biologically "female" has a multitude of aspects, which usually generally align, but sometimes diverge. Clearly, as to behavior in general and as to sexual orientation, there seems to be a spectrum, with many degrees in each of many dimensions (some barely noticed, some hard to miss).

So I write about this as an object lesson of how deeply the binary, black or white thinking or our culture distorts our view of the more deeply nuanced reality. Even one who sees themself as non-binary has a hard time escaping binary thinking. Why can the word "female" not be appropriate for a non-binary person (as we all are to some degree) -- one who has birth attributes that were ostensibly female. Isn't it just a fallacy of binary thinking to think it is not OK for a non-binary person to also be female? That a female cannot be non-binary?

I write about this because I have long taken issue with binary thinking. This is not to meant to criticize this actor in any way, but to sympathize broadly with the prevalence of this kind of blindness and absolutism in our culture. It is to empathize with those who suffer from being thought of in binary ways that fail to recognize the non-binary richness of life -- and those who suffer from thinking of themselves in a binary way. That is a harm that occurs to most of us at one time or another. As Whitman said:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

The bigger picture

Gender is just one of the host of current crises of binary thinking that lead to extreme polarization of all kinds. Political divides. The more irreconcilable divide over whether leadership must serve all of their constituency, or just those who support the leader, right or wrong. Fake news. Free speech and truth on campus vs. censorship for some zone of safety for binary thinkers. Trickle-down versus progressive economics. Capitalism versus socialism. Immigrant versus native. One race or religion versus another. Isn't the recent focus of some on "intersectionality" just an extension of binary thinking to multiple binary dimensions? Thinking in terms of binary categories (rather that category spectrums) distances and demonizes the other, blinded from seeing how much common ground there is.

The Tao symbol (which appears elsewhere in this blog) is a perfect illustration of my point, and an age-old symbol of the non-dualistic thinking central to some Asian traditions (I just noticed the irony of the actor's first name as I wrote this sentence!). We have black and white intertwined, and the dot of contrast indicates that each contains it opposite. That suggests that all females have some male in them (however large or small, and in whatever aspect) and all males have some female in them (much as some males would think that a blood libel).

Things are not black or white, but black and white. And even if nearly black or white in a single dimension, single dimensions rarely matter to the larger picture of any issue. I think we should all make a real effort to remind ourselves that that is the case for almost every issue of importance.

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(I do not profess to be "woke," but do very much try to be "awakened" and accepting of the wondrous richness of our world. My focus here is on binary and non-binary thinking, itself. I use gender identity as the example only because of this statement that struck me. If I misunderstand or express my ideas inartfully in this fraught domain, that is not my intent. I hope it is taken in the spirit of finding greater understanding that is intended.)

(In that vein, I accept that there may be complex issues specific to gender and identity that go counter to my semantic argument in some respects. But my non-binary view is that that broader truth of non-duality still over-arches. And in an awakened non-binary world, the current last word can never be known to be the future last word.)

(See also the short post just below on the theme of this blog.)

A Note on the Theme of this Blog: Everything is Deeply Intertwingled -- and, Hopefully, Becoming Smartly Intertwingled

The next post (to appear just above) is the first to indulge my desire to comment more broadly on the theme that "everything is deeply intertwingled" (as Ted Nelson put it). That has always been a core of my worldview and has been increasingly weaving into my posts -- especially on the problems of how we deal with "truth" in our social media. I say we should move toward making things more smartly intertwingled.

That post, and some that will follow, move far out of my professional expertise, but I see all of my ideas as deeply intertwingled. (I have always been intrigued by epistemology, the theory of knowledge: what can we know and how do we know it). This current  topic provided the impetus to act on my latent intent to broaden the scope of this blog to these larger issues that are now creating so much dysfunction in our society.

Beyond Ted Nelson's classic statement and his diagram (above, from Computer Lib/Dream Machines) the symbol that most elegantly conveys this perspective is the Tao symbol, which appears in many of my posts. It shows the yin and yang of female and male as intertwingling symbols of those elemental opposites — and the version with the dots in each intertwingled portion, suggests that each element also contains its opposite (a further level of intertwingling).

[Update 6/13/19, on changing the blog header:]

This blog was formerly known as “Reisman on User-Centered Media,” with the description:

On developing media platforms that are user-centered – open and adaptable to the user's needs and desires – and that earn profit from the value they create for users ...and as tools for augmenting human intellect and enlightened democracy.

That continues to be a major theme.

A Regulatory Framework for the Internet (with Thanks to Ben Thompson)

Summarizing Ben Thompson of Stratechery, plus my own targeted proposals

"A Regulatory Framework for the Internet," Ben Thompson's masterly framework, should be required reading for all regulators, as well as anyone concerned about tech and society. (Stratechery is one of the best tech newsletters, well worth the subscription price, but this article is freely accessible.)

I hope you will read Ben's full article, but here are some points that I find especially important, followed by the suggestions I posted on his forum (which is not publicly accessible).

Part I -- Highlights from Ben's Framework (emphasis added)

Opening with the UK government White Paper calling for increased regulation of tech companies, Ben quotes MIT Tech Review about the alarm it raised among privacy campaigners, who "fear that the way it is implemented could easily lead to censorship for users of social networks rather than curbing the excesses of the networks themselves."

Ben identifies three clear questions that make regulation problematic:

First, what content should be regulated, if any, and by whom?
Second, what is a viable way to monitor the content generated on these platforms?
Third, how can privacy, competition, and free expression be preserved?

Exploring the viral spread of the Christchurch hate crime video, he gets to a key issue:

What is critical to note, though, is that it is not a direct leap from “pre-Internet” to the Internet as we experience it today. The terrorist in Christchurch didn’t set up a server to livestream video from his phone; rather, he used Facebook’s built-in functionality. And, when it came to the video’s spread, the culprit was not email or message boards, but social media generally. To put it another way, to have spread that video on the Internet would be possible but difficult; to spread it on social media was trivial.

The core issue is business models: to set up a live video streaming server is somewhat challenging, particularly if you are not technically inclined, and it costs money. More expensive still are the bandwidth costs of actually reaching a significant number of people. Large social media sites like Facebook or YouTube, though, are happy to bear those costs in service of a larger goal: building their advertising businesses.

Expanding on business models, he describes the ad-based platforms as "Super Aggregators:"

The key differentiator of Super Aggregators is that they have three-sided markets: users, content providers (which may include users!), and advertisers. Both content providers and advertisers want the user’s attention, and the latter are willing to pay for it. This leads to a beautiful business model from the perspective of a Super Aggregator:

Content providers provide content for free, facilitated by the Super Aggregator
Users view that content, and provide their own content, facilitated by the Super Aggregator
Advertisers can reach the exact users they want, paying the Super Aggregator 

...Moreover, this arrangement allows Super Aggregators to be relatively unconcerned with what exactly flows across their network: advertisers simply want eyeballs, and the revenue from serving them pays for the infrastructure to not only accommodate users but also give content suppliers the tools to provide whatever sort of content those users may want.

...while they would surely like to avoid PR black-eyes, what they like even more is the limitless supply of attention and content that comes from making it easier for anyone anywhere to upload and view content of any type.

...Note how much different this is than a traditional customer-supplier relationship, even one mediated by a market-maker... When users pay they have power; when users and those who pay are distinct, as is the case with these advertising-supported Super Aggregators, the power of persuasion — that is, the power of the market — is absent.

He then distinguishes the three types of "free" relevant to the Internet, and how they differ:

“Free as in speech” means the freedom or right to do something
“Free as in beer” means that you get something for free without any additional responsibility
“Free as in puppy” means that you get something for free, but the longterm costs are substantial

...The question that should be asked, though, is if preserving “free as in speech” should also mean preserving “free as in beer.”

Platforms that are paid for by their users are "regulated" by the operation of market forces, but those that are ad-supported are not, and so need external regulation.

Ben concludes that:

...platform providers that primarily monetize through advertising should be in their own category: as I noted above, because these platform providers separate monetization from content supply and consumption, there is no price or payment mechanism to incentivize them to be concerned with problematic content; in fact, the incentives of an advertising business drive them to focus on engagement, i.e. giving users what they want, no matter how noxious.

 This distinct categorization is critical to developing regulation that actually addresses problems without adverse side effects

...from a theoretical perspective, the appropriate place for regulation is where there is market failure; constraining the application to that failure is what is so difficult.

That leads to Ben's figure that brings these ideas together, and delineates critical distinctions:

I agree completely, and build on that with my two proposals for highly targeted regulation...

Part II -- My proposals, as commented on in the Statechery Forum 
(including some minor edits and portions that were abridged to meet character limits):

Elegant model, beautifully explained! Should be required reading for all regulators.

FIRST:  Fix the business model! I suggest taking this model farther, and mandating that the "free beer" ad-based model be ratcheted away once a service reaches some critical level of scale. That would solve the problem -- and address your concerns about competition.

Why don't we regulate to fix the root cause? The root cause of Facebook's abuse of trust is its business model, and until we change that, its motivations will always be opposed to consumer and public trust.

Here is a simple way to force change, without over-engineering the details of the remedy. Requiring a growing percentage of revenue from users is the simplest way to drive a fundamental shift toward better corporate behavior. Others have suggested paying for data, and I suggest this is most readily done in the form of credits against a user service fee. Mandating that a target level of revenue (above a certain level) come from users could drive Facebook to offer such data credits, as a way to meet their user revenue target (even if most users pay nothing beyond that credit). We will not motivate trust until the user becomes the customer, and not the product.

There is a regulatory method that has already proven its success with a similarly challenging problem – forcing automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of the cars they make. The US government has for years mandated staged multi-year increases in Average Fuel Efficiency. This does not mandate how to fix things. It mandates a limit on the systems that have been shown to cause harm. Facebook and YouTube can determine how best to achieve that. Require that X% of the revenue come from users rather than advertisers. Government can monitor progress, with a timetable for ratcheting up the percentage. (This should apply only above some amount of revenues, to facilitate competition.)

With that motivation, Facebook and YouTube can be driven to shift from advertising revenue to customer revenue. That may seem difficult, but only for lack of trying. Credits for attention and data are a just a start. If we move in that direction, we can be less dependent on other, more problematic, kinds of regulation.

This regulatory strategy is outlined in To Regulate Facebook and Google, Turn Users Into Customers (in Techonomy). More on why that is important in Reverse the Biz Model! -- Undo the Faustian Bargain for Ads and Data. (And some suggestions on more effective ways to obtain user revenue:  Information Wants to be Free; Consumers May Want to Pay, (also in Techonomy.)

SECOND: Downrank dissemination, don't censor speech! Your points about limiting user expression, and that the real issue is harmful spreading on social media, are also vitally important.

I say the real issue is:

1.  Not: rules for what can and cannot be said – speech is a protected right
2.  But rather: rules for what statements are seen by who – distribution (how feeds are filtered and presented) is not a protected right.

The value of a social media service should be to disseminate the good, not the bad. (That is why we talk about “filter bubbles” – failures of value-based filtering.)

I suggest Facebook and YouTube should have little role in deciding what can be said (other than to enforce government standards of free speech and clearly prohibited speech to whatever extent practical).  What matters is who that speech is distributed to, and the network has full control of that.  Strong downranking is a sensible and practical alternative to removal -- far more effective and nuanced, and far less problematic.

I have written about new ways to use PageRank-like algorithms to determine what to downrank or uprank – “rate the raters and weight the ratings.”

• Facebook can have a fairly free hand in downranking objectionable speech
• They can apply community standards to what they promote -- to any number of communities, each with varying standards.
• They could also enable open filtering, so users/communities can chose someone else’s algorithm (or set their preferences in any algorithm). 
• With smart filtering, the spread of harmful speech can be throttled before it does much harm.
• The “augmented wisdom of the crowd” can do that very effectively, on Internet scale, in real time.
• No pre-emptive, exclusionary, censorship technique is as effective at scale -- nor as protective of free speech rights or community standards.

That approach is addressed at some length in these posts (where “fake news” is meant to include anything objectionable to some community):

• The Augmented Wisdom of Crowds: Rate the Raters and Weight the Ratings
• A Cognitive Immune System for Social Media -- Developing Systemic Resistance to Fake News

…and some further discussion on that:

• Architecting Our Platforms to Better Serve Us -- Augmenting and Modularizing the Algorithm
• The Tao of Fake News
• In the War on Fake News, All of Us are Soldiers, Already!)

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More of my thinking on these issues is summarized in this Open Letter to Influencers Concerned About Facebook and Other Platforms

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See the Selected Items tab for more on this theme.

My Latest Articles in Techonomy

Here is the growing list of my articles published in Techonomy on FairPay, business, media, and society:

A Zucker-Wolf in Privacy-Sheep’s Clothing

By Richard Reisman  |  March 15, 2019, 11:19 AM  |  Techonomy Exclusive

Despite his supposedly "Privacy-Focused Vision," it seems clear that Zuckerberg will not voluntarily go where he must. So we must force him to make needed changes in the core Facebook business model, one way or another.   MORE

To Regulate Facebook and Google, Turn Users Into Customers

By Richard Reisman  |  February 26, 2019, 11:10 AM  |  Techonomy Exclusive

The seductive idea that we can enjoy free internet services -- if we just view ads and turn over our data -- has been recognized to be “the original sin” of the Internet. Requiring internet platforms to generate revenue from users could drive better corporate behavior.  MORE

Information Wants to be Free; Consumers May Want to Pay

By Richard Reisman  |  November 15, 2018, 11:14 AM 2 Comments  |  Techonomy Exclusive

Current approaches to dynamic pricing are consumer-hostile. The author argues that there's a better way to build win-win relationships in the digital space that use cooperation, trust, and transparency to nurture customer lifetime value.  MORE

Zucked -- Roger McNamee's Wake Up Call ...And Beyond

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe is an authoritative and frightening call to arms -- but I was disappointed that author Roger McNamee did not address some of the suggestions for remedies that I shared with him last June (posted as An Open Letter to Influencers Concerned About Facebook and Other Platforms).

Here are brief comments on this excellent book, and highlights of what I would add. Many recognize the problem with the advertising-based business model, but few seem to be serious about finding creative ways to solve it. It is not yet proven that my suggestions will work quite as I envision, but the deeper need is to get people thinking about finding and testing more win-win solutions. His book makes a powerful case for why this is urgently needed.

McNamee's urgent call to action

McNamee offers the perspective of a powerful Facebook and industry insider. A prominent tech VC, he was an early investor and mentor to Zuckerberg -- the advisor who suggested that he not sell to Yahoo, and who introduced him to Sandberg. He was alarmed in early-mid 2016 by early evidence of manipulation affecting the UK and US elections, but found that Zuckerberg and Sandberg were unwilling to recognize and act on his concerns. As he became more concerned, he joined with others to raise awareness of this issue and work to bring about needed change.

He provides a rich summary of how we got here, most of the issues we now face, and the many prominent voices for remedial action. He addresses the business issues and the broader questions of governance, democracy, and public policy. He tells us: “A dystopian technology future overran our lives before we were ready.” (As also quoted in the sharply favorable NY Times review.)

It's the business model, stupid!

McNamee adds his authoritative voice to the many observers who have concluded that the business model that serves advertisers to enable consumers to obtain "free" services distorts incentives, causing businesses to optimize for advertisers, not for users:

Without a change in incentives, we should expect the platforms to introduce new technologies that enhance their already-pervasive surveillance capabilities...the financial incentives of advertising business models guarantee that persuasion will always be the default goal of every design."

He goes on to suggest:

The most effective path would be for users to force change. Users have leverage...

The second path is government intervention. Normally I would approach regulation with extreme reluctance, but the ongoing damage to democracy, public health, privacy, and competition justifies extraordinary measures. The first step would be to address the design and bushiness model failures that make internet platforms vulnerable to exploitation. ...Facebook and Google have failed at self-regulation.

My suggestions on the business model, and related regulatory action

This is where I have novel suggestions -- outlined on my FairPayZone blog, and communicated to McNamee last June -- that have not gotten wide attention, and are ignored in Zucked. These are at two levels.

The auto emissions regulatory strategy. This is a simple, proven regulatory approach for forcing Facebook (and similar platforms) to shift from advertising-based revenue to user-based revenue. That would fundamentally shift incentives from user manipulation to user value.

If Facebook or other consumer platforms fail to move to do that voluntarily, this simple regulatory strategy could force that -- in a market-driven way. The government could simply mandate that X% of their revenue must come from their users -- with a timetable for gradually increasing X.  This is how auto emissions mandates work -- don't mandate how to fix things, just mandate a measurable result, and let the business figure out how best to achieve that. Since reverse-metered ads (with a specific credit against user fees) would count as a form of reader revenue, that would provide an immediate incentive for Facebook to provide such compensation -- and to begin developing other forms of user revenue. This strategy is outlined in Privacy AND Innovation ...NOT Oligopoly -- A Market Solution to a Market Problem.

The deeper shift to user revenue models. Creative strategies can enable Facebook (and other businesses) to shift from advertising revenue to become substantially user-funded. Zuckerberg has
thrown up his hands at finding a better way: "I don’t think the ad model is going to go away, because I think fundamentally, it’s important to have a service like this that everyone in the world can use, and the only way to do that is to have it be very cheap or free."

Who Should Pay the Piper for Facebook? (& the rest), explains this new business model architecture -- with a focus on how it can be applied to let Facebook be "cheap or free" for those who get limited value and have limited ability to pay, but still be paid for, at fair levels for those who get more value and who are willing and able to pay for that. This architecture, called FairPay, has gained recognition for operationalizing a solution that businesses can begin to apply now.

• A reverse meter for ads and data. This FairPay architecture still allows for advertising to continue to defray the cost of service, but on a more selective, opt-in basis --  by applying a "reverse meter" that credits the value of user attention and data against each user's service fees -- at agreed upon terms and rates. That shifts the game from the advertiser being the customer of the platform, to to the advertiser being the customer of the user (facilitated by the platform). In that way advertising is carried only if done in a manner that is acceptable to the user. That aligns the incentives of the user, the advertiser, and the platform. Others have proposed similar directions, but I take it farther, in ways that Facebook could act on now.

• A consumer-value-first model for user-revenue. Reverse metering is a good starting place for re-aligning incentives, but Facebook can go much deeper, to transform how its business operates.The simplest introduction to the transformative twist of the FairPay strategy is in my Techonomy article, Information Wants to be Free; Consumers May Want to Pay   (It has also been outlined in in Harvard Business Review, and more recently in the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management.) The details will depend on context, and will need testing to fully develop and refine over time, but the principles are clear and well supported.
  
  This involves ways to mass-customize pricing of Facebook, to be "cheap or free" where appropriate, and to set customized fair prices for each user who obtain real value and can be enticed to pay for that. That is adaptive to individual usage and value-- and eliminates the risk of having to pay when the value actually obtained did not warrant that. That aligns incentives for transparency, trust, and co-creation of real value for each user. Behavioral economics has shown that people are willing to pay and will do so even voluntarily -- when they see good reason to help sustain the creation of value that they actually want and receive. We just need business models that understand and build on that.

Bottom line. Whatever the details, unless the Facebook shifts direction on its own to aggressively move in the direction of user payments -- which now seems unlikely -- regulatory pressure will be needed to force that (just as with auto emissions). A user revolt might force similar changes as well, but the problem is far too urgent to wait and see.

The broader call -- augmenting the wisdom of crowds

Shifting to a user-revenue-based business model will change incentives and drive significant progress to remedy many of the problems that McNamee and many others have raised. McNamee provides a wide-ranging overview of many of those problems and most of the initiatives that promise to help resolve them, but there, too, I offer suggestions that have not gained attention.

Most fundamental is the power of social media platforms to shape collective intelligence. Many have come to see that, while technology has great power to augment human intelligence, applied badly, it can have the opposite effect of making us more stupid. We need to steer hard for a more positive direction, now that we see how dangerous it is to take good results for granted, and how easily things can go bad. McNamee observes that "We...need to address these problems the old fashioned way, by talking to one another and finding common ground." Effective social media design can help us do that.

Another body of my work relates to how to design social media feeds and filtering algorithms to do just that, as explained in The Augmented Wisdom of Crowds:  Rate the Raters and Weight the Ratings:

• The core issue is one of trust and authority -- it is hard to get consistent agreement in any broad population on who should be trusted or taken as an authority, no matter what their established credentials or reputation. Who decides what is fake news? What I suggested is that this is the same problem that has been made manageable by getting smarter about the wisdom of crowds -- much as Google's PageRank algorithm beat out Yahoo and AltaVista at making search engines effective at finding content that is relevant and useful.
  
  As explained further in that post, the essence of the method is to "rate the raters" -- and to weight those ratings accordingly. Working at Web scale, no rater's authority can be relied on without drawing on the judgement of the crowd. Furthermore, simple equal voting does not fully reflect the wisdom of the crowd -- there is deeper wisdom about those votes to be drawn from the crowd.
  
  Some of the crowd are more equal than others. Deciding who is more equal, and whose vote should be weighted more heavily can be determined by how people rate the raters -- and how those raters are rated -- and so on. Those ratings are not universal, but depend on the context: the domain and the community -- and the current intent or task of the user. Each of us wants to see what is most relevant, useful, appealing, or eye-opening -- for us -- and perhaps with different balances at different times. Computer intelligence can distill those recursive, context-dependent ratings, to augment human wisdom.

• A major complicating issue is that of biased assimilation. The perverse truth seems to be that "balanced information may actually inflame extreme views." This is all too clear in the mirror worlds of pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions and their media favorites like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. Each side thinks the other is unhinged or even evil, and layers a vicious cycle of distrust around anything they say. It seems one of the few promising counters to this vicious cycle is what Cass Sunstein referred to as surprising validators: people one usually gives credence to, but who suggest one's view on a particular issue might be wrong. An example of a surprising validator was the "Confession of an Anti-GMO Activist." This item is  readily identifiable as a "turncoat" opinion that might be influential for many, but smart algorithms can find similar items that are more subtle, and tied to less prominent people who may be known and respected by a particular user. There is an opportunity for electronic media services to exploit this insight that "what matters most may be not what is said, but who, exactly, is saying it."

If and when Facebook and other platforms really care about delivering value to their users (and our larger society), they will develop this kind of ability to augment the wisdom of the crowd. (Similar large-scale ranking technology is already proven in uses for advertising and Google search.) Our enlightened, democratic civilization will disintegrate or thrive, depending on whether they do that.

The facts of the facts. One important principle which I think McNamee misunderstands (as do many), is his critique that "To Facebook, facts are not absolute; they are a choice to be left initially to users and their friends but then magnified by algorithms to promote engagement." Yes, the problem is that the drive for engagement distorts our drive for the facts -- but the problem is not that "To Facebook, facts are not absolute." As I explain in The Tao of Fake News, facts are not absolute --we cannot rely on expert authorities to define absolute truth -- human knowledge emerges from an adaptive process of collective truth-seeking by successive approximation and the application of collective wisdom. It is always contingent on that, not absolute. That is how scholarship and science and democratic government work, that is what the psychology of cognition and knowledge demonstrates, and that is what effective social media can help all of us do better.

Other monopoly platform excesses - openness and interoperability

McNamee provides a good survey of many of the problems of monopoly (or oligopoly) power in the platforms, and some of the regulatory and antitrust remedies that are needed to restore the transparency, openness, and flexibility and market-driven incentives needed for healthy innovation. These include user ownership of their data and metadata, portability of the users' social graphs to promote competition, and audits and transparency of algorithms.

I have addressed similar issues, and go beyond McNamee's suggestions to emphasize the need for openness and interoperability of competing and complementary services -- see Architecting Our Platforms to Better Serve Us -- Augmenting and Modularizing the Algorithm. This draws on my early career experience watching antitrust regulatory actions relating to AT&T (in the Bell System days), IBM (in the mainframe era), and Microsoft (in the early Internet browser wars).

The wake up call

There are many prominent voices shouting wake up calls. See the partial list at the bottom of An Open Letter to Influencers Concerned About Facebook and Other Platforms, and MacNamee's Bibliographic Essay at the end of Zucked (excellent, except for the omission that I address here).

All are pointing in much the same direction. We all need to do what we can to focus the powers that be -- and the general population -- to understand and address this problem. The time to turn this rudderless ship around is dangerously short, and effective action to set a better direction and steer for it has barely begun. We have already sailed blithely into killer icebergs, and many more are ahead.

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This is cross-posted from both of my blogs, FairPayZone.com and Reisman on User-Centered Media, which delve further into these issues.

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See the Selected Items tab for more on this theme.

The Real Crisis: The War to Save Democracy in 2020 Has Begun - Journalism Needs to Mobilize

"Will the Media Be Trump's Accomplice Again in 2020? We have a second chance. Let’s not blow it." That was the title of a NY Times op-ed by Frank Bruni.

This is one of the more complete of many prescriptions for journalists to manage this real crisis (and deflate the fake ones) -- but it is just another cry against the storm with no concrete plan for action.

The imminent crisis

The 2016 election in the US, similar problems around the world, "fake news," and disinformation have surfaced as crucial problems. Many are at work on solutions, but most will take time to be effective. We do not have that time.

In the US, and for the rest of the world, the most imminent threat is that Trump will use the press as he did in 2016 -- and still does. He still orchestrates a Trump-centric media circus. As Bruni points out, we need to restore meaningful conversation on the issues, whatever the policies at issue. 

Even most of those who support many of Trump's policies are dismayed at the dysfunction of this media circus (entertaining as it may be) -- this is not a partisan issue, but one all reasonable people can support.

Journalism needs to rally around best practices for containing this real and present danger now. Define them, follow them, and call out those who do not. To do that, leading journalists, publishers and J-schools should organize a Manhattan Project to unify and act now! If you do not do it right now, you may never have another chance.

Such a project should be inclusive, drawing in all who share the core values of intelligent discourse. 

Are you journalists, or cheerleaders (and profiteers) in a flame war?

Bruni's starter list

It is a long op-ed, well worth reading, and no doubt there are other important practices and tactics, but let's begin with some extracts from Bruni's op-ed (see the original for attribution of quotes):

“Pocahontas” won’t be lonely for long. …how much heed will we in the media pay to this stupidity? …That’s a specific question but also an overarching one — about the degree to which we’ll let him set the terms of the 2020 presidential campaign, about our appetite for antics versus substance, and about whether we’ll repeat the mistakes that we made in 2016 

Trump tortures us. Deliberately, yes, but I’m referring to the ways in which he keeps yanking our gaze his way.

“When you cover this as spectacle…what’s lost is context, perspective and depth. And when you cover this as spectacle, he is the star.” 

Trump was and is a perverse gift to the mainstream, establishment media, a magnet for eyeballs at a juncture when we were struggling economically and desperately needed one. Just present him as the high-wire act and car crash that he is; the audience gorges on it. But readers…[are] starved of information about the fraudulence of his supposed populism and the toll of his incompetence. And he wins. He doesn’t hate the media...He uses us.

Regarding their fitness for office, they [Trump and Clinton] were treated identically? In retrospect, that’s madness. It should have been in real time, too.

We need to do something else, too, which is to recognize that Trump now has an actual record in office and to discuss that with as much energy as we do his damned Twitter feed.

“Instead of covering Trump’s tweets on a live, breaking basis, just cover them in the last five minutes of a news show. They’re presidential statements, but we can balance them.”

We can also allow his challengers to talk about themselves as much as they do about him. …“It was deeply unfair… the question was always, ‘What’s your reaction to what Trump just said?,’ there’s no way to drive your own message.”

“It got to the point where it was one outrage after another, and we just moved on each time” …Instead, we should hold on to the most outrageous, unconscionable moments. We should pause there…. We can’t privilege the incremental over …the enduring. It lets Trump off the hook.

"…if you put enough experts on arguing… people will watch. And that’s what we’re doing with our politics. The media is not using their strength, their franchise, to elevate and illuminate the conversation. They’re just getting you all jazzed up about the game.”

But the lure of less demanding labors …is always there, especially because readers and viewers…reward it. What they lap up …is Trump the Baby…the Buffoon…the Bully… And that’s on them.

The real story of Trump isn’t his amorality and outrageousness. It’s Americans’ receptiveness to that. 

“Trump basically ran on blowing the whole thing up.…It’s critically important that we find ways to get at what it is people imagine government should be doing and…really look at what kind of leadership we need.”

A Manhattan Project for Journalism - the war to extinguish the flame war

When America became the "arsenal for democracy" in the battle against fascism, we mobilized for conventional warfare -- and with a massive Manhattan Project to change the game with an A-bomb. The best minds were assembled, tested many alternative strategies, and then focused the best resources in the world on what worked.

Trump has conquered the presidency with an artful flame war. Many have written very intelligently about the issues and strategies that Bruni raises. There is no silver bullet (or A-bomb), but there are a suite of strategies that promise to contain the nonsense -- but only if widely understood and practiced. No one person or organization has the knowledge or ability to do this alone. Bruni's points (and similar suggestions from many others) can be distilled, formalized and supplemented to provide a guide to best practices, both at high level, and in the guts of how journalism is practiced. Our best minds for journalism must come together and quickly define these best-practices, and then we must see to it that all understand them and work to enforce them.

If we have clear guidelines, we can call out and marginalize those who fan the flames - whether Trump and his supporters, or others.

Fair process is not partisan - the real challenge for "mainstream media"

Such a focus on process is not partisan, but simply a matter of a fairness to all citizens, and to the spirit of enlightened democracy that made America great. To the extent Trump or others (on either side of any issue) make responsible policy proposals and argue them responsibly, this would treat them fairly. To the extent they do not, it marginalizes them fairly.

Obviously our current government will not make this happen - no new "fairness doctrine" can be expected now. Journalists are uniquely positioned to step up to their responsibility. It must be a voluntary effort. Some prominent pundits and outlets will not cooperate, for political or business reasons. But a truly responsible "mainstream media" can work together to become a powerful force for reason. If we do not all hang together to fight the flame war, we will all hang separately.

Real Journalists of the World, Unite!

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(If any broad effort to do this already exists, please let me know.)

(I am not a journalist, but one focus of my career has been on how technology can augment our collaborative intelligence. Journalism in this age is a form of such augmentation -- or more lately, de-augmentation.  I am ready to contribute to this effort as I can.)

Originally posted on my User-Centered Media blog.

2019 New Year's Resolution: Let's Work Together to Invent a Better 2020!

My forecast for 2019: The best way to predict the future is to invent it -- let's work together on inventing a better 2020!

We face two over-arching and related challenges, one in the world of technology, and one in the larger world of enlightened democratic society.

At the broadest level, 2019 promises to be perhaps the worst and most traumatic year in recent American history. My point is not one of politics or policy (I bite my tongue), but of our basic processes of democratic society -- how we all work together to understand the world and make decisions. We now see all to well how much harm technology has done to that -- not by itself, but as an amplifier of the worst in us.

Within that world of technology, many have come to realize that we have taken a wrong turn in building vast and deeply influential infrastructures that are sustained by advertising. That perverts the profit incentive from creating value for we the people, to exploiting us to profit advertisers. That drive for engagement and targeting inherently conflicts with the creation of real value for users and society. We seem to not even be looking very hard for any solution beyond band-aids that barely alter 1) the perverse incentives of advertising, and 2) the failing zero-sum economics of artificial scarcity.

We seem to be at a loss for how to solve these problems at either level. I suggest that is simply a failure of will, imagination, and experimentation that we can all help rectify. Many prominent thought leaders have said much the same. I list some of them, and offer creative suggestions in An Open Letter to Influencers Concerned About Facebook and Other Platforms. I hope you will read it, as well as the related material it links to.

My suggestions are more specific, actionable, and practical. That letter summarizes and links to ideas I have been developing for many years, but have taken on new urgency. They are well-supported, but as yet unproven in their full form. I can't be sure that my solutions will work, but there seems to be growing consensus that the problems are real, even if few have suggested any actionable path to solving them. (I have been a successful inventor and futurist for many decades. I have often been wrong about details of my answers, but have rarely have been far wrong about problems and issues. Very smart and well-informed people think I am on the right track here.)

But whether or not I am right about the solutions, we all have to make it a priority try to find, test, and refine the best solutions we can to confront these critical problems.

Still, few in technology, business, or government have turned from business as usual to rise to the urgent challenges we now face -- and even those who alert us to these problems seem to have few concrete strategies for effective action.

Please consider the urgency and importance of these issues at both levels, see if my suggestions or those of others resonate -- and add your voice in those directions -- or work to suggest better directions.

If we do not begin to make real progress in 2019, we may face a very dark 2020 and beyond.

If we do begin to turn this ship around, we can recharge the great promise of technology to augment our intellect and our society, and to create a new economics of abundance.

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This is cross posted from both of my blogs, FairPayZone.com and Reisman on User-Centered Media, which delve further into these issues.