Category Archives: Social

Where It Came From: Attribution 2.0

Posted on by

Deep fakes and the like are a growing problem:

Of course it will get worse, and new angles will emerge that are unheard of. Regulation could be the solution, although nobody will be a fan. If you want to have a platform where you are immune from having wrong content on it (as long as you police the content to a reasonable level), then you must also follow this one simple rule. All content has to have an origin, and that origin is posted with the content.

  • Music comes from the artist’s home page
  • Memes have an origin
  • Photos come from the page of who took the photo

Any authorisations, all types of rights, are stored at the source.

So, if I want to share a meme I found online, I have to go to the source, and maybe agree to something, and maybe get a link back to the source with my auth ID in it… and so on. We are talking Creative Commons for everything.

To post something from a particular source, the platform must have registered it. So to post a picture of King Charles, it must come from a news source, or his own website, or a registered source that will take the fall if they have acquired it or used it wrongly or illegally.

There are some downsides to this approach, obviously!

Posting content in social media will take longer, sometimes. Sharing a link from a registered source won’t take any longer. Reposting something that already cites a source, won’t take longer. Banging out a funny meme using content that is not yours, will take longer, and can only improve things for everyone – it will be a good opportunity to be a bit more serious, especially for topics that warrant it, like politics and anti-woke.

It is anti-freedom of speech. Er, no, it isn’t, but it will be seen that way. People misunderstand what those freedoms actually entail. Never mind though, because attribution regulations will only apply to social networks of a certain large size. Your anarcho-mischief collective will fly under the radar, although they will need to have a prominent message stating that they are non-regulated.

Closial: Slow, Real, Local Social

Posted on by

Something lacking in social media is the ability to follow people or see posts based on how close they are to your location.

  • Real News – by joining forces with local news media, the sort that only has 10 or less stories per day
  • Local Organisations – like local government announcements, and elected officials can have verified accounts
  • Local Sports – we can offer league tables etc for local and youth sports comps
  • Local Weather
  • Local Radio/TV – quick, easy access
  • Local Users – anyone can join, but they must nominate a location in the local area (it need not be your home)
  • Prioritising Local Posts – the closer to you physically, the more prominent the post/story. Like a burst waterpipe on your street
  • Crime/Safety – discussions and the ability to directly report anything – like potholes or stray dogs – to the appropriate people
  • Marketplace – garage sales etc

Self-moderating via Real accounts

This is important, because moderation is a huge cost for social networks. All users must use their real names, and consequently any borderline illegal behaviour is unlikely

Ads only from local business. Perhaps sections are sponsored by, a week at a time.

Reddit can be the Next Twitter

Posted on by

Reddit already has everything in place that you need to replace Twitter. Actually, it is better than Twitter in all of these ways:

  • Self-moderation
  • Variety of post types
  • Better structure for discussions
  • Premium membership for $6/mo
  • Smarter crowd?

You can follow people on Reddit, so all they need to make it work as a Twitter-replacement as well is:

  • Short form posts than can be filtered for
  • User home pages that are their own communities (already exists, post to your profile)

In fact, anyone can make their own community. Famous people can “blue tick” themselves by simply linking to it from somewhere else they are verified. And short posts are already do-able.

Reddit can make this happen. The amount of coding is minimal, and they would get enough new users to get the valuations and users for an IPO that they are planning anyway.

You can post on Reddit and have it automatically share in on Twitter. It doesn’t look amazing, but you can use the Reddit title to be your “tweet”.

The Next Twitter Won’t Be Social

Posted on by

What we consider to be “social networks” mostly aren’t.

Facebook is a true social network, where keeping up with and communicating with hundreds of actual friends and acquaintances is typical. You cannot leave FB for a rival social network, because your friends are not there – Catch 22.

Twitter is mostly for following what famous people and news sources say, and commenting. Or people of minor fame in a Ponzi scheme of acknowledgment and validation. You can DM people but it wouldn’t matter if that went away.

Instagram is similar to Twitter – easily replaced, with connections not being critical in the real world.

Musk has mused that Twitter could become like WeChat, a Swiss-army-knife social app (there are many reasons why that would fail). I suggest that it should go the other way, and have zero social applications.

The next Twitter, I think Pony Express is a good name…

Pony Express would be just a news aggregator. So, the same as Twitter is now, but:

  • Greater variety of post types – images, links, long-form, PDF, press release, scores, polls, products with “buy now” buttons.
  • Categories for posts that you decide, like folders in an email account
  • No video.
  • No DMs
  • Sharing is all external, like “share to Facebook”
  • No promoted posts

It will need to be a system that can expand to have whichever post types business want.

Pony Express will have verified and non-verified users. Only the verified can post or leave comments. Everyone else can still read posts and share externally.

Verification is free, via TripledChecked.com. Because of the verification, which truly knows who you are, people will be very wary of doing anything illegal on Pony Express, which means moderation costs will be significantly reduced. We could even reward users for moderating – easily done by ratios of reporting and others verifying that there is a problem.

There will also be different subscription types. Standard is similar to what Twitter has today, ads that are not tailored to you. But if you are willing to see ads for categories like gambling, crypto etc, then you can earn credits/points/crypto for that, regardless of your interactions with them, but do you need levels of general activity.

If you pay, then you get to:

  • choose which categories of ads you see
  • see far fewer ads
  • prioritise the users that you follow, how they rank in your feed

Also different, is that the famous people / news sources that you follow, have their own profile page that is much better than what the other services offer. A page that can be your home page you send everyone to:

  • Links to everything you have – other socials, online store, etc (Pony Express will not have any store function)
  • Photos
  • Archive of posts, sortable by category as well
  • Badges (like a charity you have donated to, probably NFT-powered)
  • Endorsements (essentially the other users that you like)
  • Background art if you want, but it will be just wallpaper down the sides.
  • Music playlist (via a 3rd party)
  • Recommended books (affiliate with Amazon or the like)
  • Bio
  • Contact form for businesses

And so on. Not dissimilar to what the other networks have, but making it a true feature. Regular people can use it instead of having a website. Businesses can use a template that makes it is a good landing page for ads.

And here’s the killer – GET THE NEWS FIRST

For a fee (probably a freemium model), there is a companion app that is for creating the posts, and sending them to other platforms as well. Not unlike existing 3rd party tools that schedule posts. What makes it special is that your posts will appear on Pony Express first, and the others via a time delay. That delay might only be a few minutes, but everyone will know where they can get the news first.

Companion Planting of People

Posted on by

Companion Planting is something people I dislike have never head of.

Plants that, when planted alongside each other, help each other. Typically one scares away the bugs that will eat the other.

A bit like gang members forming a perimeter around a homeless person.
Or helping an old lady across the road

But are there real-world examples?

Artists and patrons?

Yes, that is good, and fits the NFT direction

But what about a symbiotic relationship between two humans (or groups of)?

I guess “love” counts.

Everything, Everywhere – Better than Google (concept)

Posted on by

Google’s mission statement is this:

Google’s mission statement is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I would argue they could try harder, but they have a fundamental issue – they aren’t very likeable or trustworthy.

Google is the dominant search engine, and it has achieved that primarily due to four fundamentals:

  • The Internet is free to navigate
  • Use bots to index all of it
  • Analyse the content of each website
  • Decide which information is more important, by who links to what

All of this is done without permission, just like you and I can visit most websites without permission. An alien race with an Internet connection could create a Google, and we would never know (aside from their strange IP address…)

But what if Google had permission, had agreements, to delve deeper. It hasn’t of course, so lets consider a Google-killer called The All.

No, scary. We will call it TheOmni.xyz (Omni for short)

So which extra data points and sources could be included, by being inclusive, and not a “don’t do evil” loner?

Wikipedia says The deep web, invisible web, or hidden web are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard web search-engines.

That means sites that you need to be logged into to find content that otherwise is not visible. Google doesn’t access that, which makes their mission statement seem a bit weak, after 22 years of existence…

Some such sites might embrace the idea of making their information accessible in exchange for being part of bringing down Google…

Now, don’t misunderstand, this is not about making silly memes rise to the top of the search results, BUT some walled info could make a for a better search engine, if done intelligently.

For example, discussions in local community groups on FB, arguments between verified academics in Twitter (if that was a thing…)

New, different data points could be harvested from so many places if permission was granted:

  • Amazon “you might also like this”
  • Most read stories in a newspaper
  • Scholarly articles
  • Broker recommendations
  • Social media, of course
  • The Wayback Machine
  • Platforms like WordPress and Shopify could provide visitor data

While they may offer unlimited indexing access to Omni, the results would likely be partial in nature. A smart enough system could provide an intermediary page that has a succinct answer, but you need to join/pay to see the full information.

Here’s a good example. Instead of Google finally starting to try and group the same news stories and indicate which came first, by analysis… Omni can simply get such data from the news services. The indexed version of the page would have data only Omni can see, like where they sourced their story from.

Trusted providers could provide an honest date of publication, instead of Google trying to work it out.

The revenue model might not be too difficult. Omni coves all the general web indexing (same as Google) and gets half the revenue. All the other data providers get a share based on how many data points they provide that lead to search result.

The starting point is not difficult either – news. There has already been a lot of problems with Google “stealing” news and working out compensation. Why doesn’t every legitimate news service (must have some original, actual reporting, as judged by humans) band together and produce a news search engine, and block Google?

They are already quite incestuous anyway, reporting on what their competitors reported… syndicating. Maybe formalise it more.

From there they branch out into academia, which is kinda similar – rivalry but the shared goals.

Then get the Socials to share data on how the news service’s own stories perform (shares, likes).

And it keeps expanding, via trust and mutual benefit, until Google is no more!

Permissions-Based Society

Posted on by

Once upon a time, passports didn’t exist, the world was open to all (although you might have been restricted from entering castles).

With time society has become more careful about who can do what and where. Remember needing a Photo ID to rent a VHS video or get a library card?

More and more your access to some place requires permission. I need to swipe a card to take the elevator to my workplace, and swipe a fob to enter my 24/7 gym.

For almost everything useful online I need to register. Current debates about a misconstrued “freedom of speech” will likely lead to platforms that require an ID verification.

Older kids are (thankfully) being taught that when it comes to sex, permission needs to be explicit, not implied.

Key to my idea here is workplace flirting. It seems to me that it is a very subjective realm, what is OK or not. For example commenting on someone’s appearance can fit into a variety of spectrums, from mentioning the color of the clothing, to the brand (hey, I like XYX too!), to “damn girl, how did you snag that?”, to “is that a new harido, it suits you”, to “you are looking great”, to things clearly crude…

Once everyone is hooked into an Augmented Reality system, I can imagine that permissions can be assigned in the real world, just like you can choose who sees what in Facebook.

So when I glance at Brian in the typing pool, a message could pop-up saying “if you even mention my physique, HR will know in milliseconds”, or it could say “flatter me, I like to be talked about”. Clearly a scale of appropriateness is needed. Said AR system will of course record all conversations. And maybe monitor where your eyes go when looking at someone.

Clothes could come with built in permissions – the wearer wants you to stare lustfully. Or maybe your AR specs blur out things when you look at someone

AND…

Autistic people (etc, just for an example) could have it so when being served in a store, the AR glasses indicate that you would prefer not being asked if you need help.

Taxi divers can be informed that you dislike chit-chat.

AR Notes

Posted on by

Killer apps can lead to great broad success.

For AR, I can imagine that sticky notes could be of great use.

For example, you notice that cold air is entering your home through a gap in the window frame. You can make an AR note at that very spot, and next time you look at it, you will be reminded.

Even better, attach notes to people. Like their names. Or something you shouldn’t mention. If that note is in your face when looking at them, you should be OK

Peak Clock / Fuzzy Time

Posted on by

I think this is an original idea… I am reading a book about quantum physics and time…

We have let time dictate what we do, and when. But a few hundred years ago few people had a clock or watch, and few people needed one.

I think we are heading back that way, and I think precision timekeeping will disappear, aside from being an odd artefact useful for only a few things.

Remember when people had 90210 or Sex and the City parties, and you had to be there before it started?

With hybrid office work, I have noticed people caring less about start and finish times. Where I work, we are in the office every other day, but people staying at home on those days, occasionally, matters not. And it is not unusual for sometime to do an hour of work at home, and then commute for a 9am start. Today a colleague turned up at 4 – he was going out in the city and the office was nearby, so he popped in. This is new and accepted. The cornerstone of time x society, the 9 to 5, is disappearing.

Some things rely on time, and I can’t see that changing. For example 3x 8 hour shifts at a factory. But they will become less common, very quickly.

  • We now get to watch TV when it suits us.
  • Public transport is, in general, becoming much more frequent. In some parts of Melbourne tram timetables say “every 8 minutes” instead of specifying times.
  • With mobile phones, arriving at a destination at a precise time is no longer required, because we can send a text saying we are 20 mins away.
  • Some high schools are introducing flexible schedules
  • And we all know the start time of a party is, if given, not meaningful

What about, say, doctors appointments? Well, a utopian future has sufficient numbers of doctors to making booking unnecessary.

What about the President’s address to the citizens on an urgent matter? Pre-record it and make it available from X time, and whenever after that that suits viewers to watch it. I predict times are said to be from, and not at.

Rock concerts? Guarantee not to start before X time.

I think the loosening of time will be good for society – time currently stresses people.

Alien Contact Portal

Posted on by

Disturbingly, the QAnon crowd seem to be pivoting towards aliens are amongst us.

Some such people believe that dozens of different types of alien entities are here, with some good and some bad, and there are galactic councils and so on. All have arms and legs and are roughly our size…

Of course the info is channeled, or from actual witnesses who cannot show any even tiny amount of proof.

So why not give them the product they desire – a way to communicate directly with the aliens.

Call it a reverse-engineered, hyper quantum portal stargate micro macro dowaddle thingy… or whatever made up thing tests better. Pay some people to be the aliens, er, I mean translate the alien replies.

Some of the aliens will say something that captures the public imagination and will become the new Q.

Run ads on the site selling 5G protection magic wands or whatever.