Closial: Slow, Real, Local Social

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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.

The No ID Option in a Digital ID Nation

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Here in Australia we have a general fear of a “one ID to rule them all”, and instead we have a hodge podge of pseudo national IDs – Medicare card, passport, driver’s license, which combined get us the 100 points of ID we need. Kinda painful to achieve the same thing, with all the same drawbacks.

When a One ID comes along, there will be backlash from many, especially the sovereign citizen / anti-vax types. So perhaps we could appease them with the option of opting-out?

If we go way back to where being identified was first needed, it was for taxation. And it still revolves around that. Without taxation, nations fail.

We can look at how backpackers are treated, and come up with a similar option for residents who want to be without an ID.

Reduced pay – you can be employed, without ID, but the pay rate will be discounted to what the after-tax amount would be for anyone with ID.

Can’t get married officially – most of us don’t now anyway…

Can’t travel overseas – no passport

They do get the same public schooling and healthcare – because they are effectively paying tax, and they are still living in our country

No driver’s license – but when self-driving cars arrive, it won’t be needed

Cannot be a company director, or operate a tax-paying business – but that leaves plenty of self-employment possibilities

And guess what – aside from taxes (all you need is a birth certificate to get a TaxFile number), all of the above can already be achieved with just a birth certificate.

We still need to provide a path to ID, for when they come to their senses. So people will still have birth certificates. And their babies will as well, that is non-negotiable, they can’t assign their anarchy to their children as well.

So, unless the anti-people want to fight for no birth certificate, this is currently not an issue.

Posted in Gov

Reddit can be the Next Twitter

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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

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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.

What Next for Trumpty Dumpty?

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Presuming that Donald Trump avoids the humiliation of contending for the Republican 2024 nomination, and losing to DeSantis… what other options does Trump have?

We know that he wants to be in the limelight, and we know he likes winning, even if it is only himself who thinks it.

Meanwhile NewsMax is being sued (rightfully so) by Dominion Voting Machines.

  • NewsMax settles out of court for a hefty sum, and goes bankrupt. Why? Well, they are worth more without the negative publicity of a court case, and they’ll all get rich from it somehow.
  • Trump buys NewsMax and acts as if he is America’s leader with a regular time slot
  • TruthSocial gains traction after people leave Twitter. It is the same as Mastodon, but “American”
  • He uses NewsMax and TruthSocial to cross-promote each other
  • Trump keeps on endorsing politicians, keeps using MAGA.
  • A new conspiracy theory will turn up – we are overdue – and America’s right will become more splintered than ever
  • DeSantis wins in 2024, because either a) Biden lingers and is way too old, b) Harris runs and is not likeable (and not male and not white), c) the infighting over who else runs causes damage and they end up with someone sub-standard
  • However, enough MAGA candidates are elected to hold a balance of power, and Trump pulls their strings
  • Dirt on DeSantis comes out (Trump says he has some), and there is a push to replace him with Trump

Trump will buy NewsMax, finally, and aim to rule the US in his own way, pulling strings and taking credit. And not run for POTUS again. He will stay smugly content until his final days, with his new young wife.

Introducing Artus

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Artus is an art exploration app. Most art sharing sites/apps are either art for sale or sharing work between artists.

Artus is more like Twitter, with a far more viewers than creators.

To share your art, some of it must be 100% free, for any use.

The typical user is a lover of art (not a creator =- they are a minority), who can see new art daily, via:

  • Scrolling feed, like social media
  • New tabs in the browser (it is already loaded in the background)
  • Digital picture frames

When you like a piece of art, you can follow the artist (and potentially pay them for art somehow), or the style/theme, which is done vias AI analysis.

AI art is allowed but must be designated as such.
No photos.

Think of it as a TikTok scrolling activity, but for sophisticated people. Or Instagram but purely for art.

BTW, the Ello social network is kinda in the right direction, but the users seem to all be artists…

White House: AI Bill of Rights

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This is good news – a series of guidelines aimed at protecting the American public from burgeoning technologies that utilize artificial intelligence (AI). Here’s my take on how the 5 principles could affect one of the biggest services of all, Google Ads.

“Safe and Effective Systems” – Google have hubris and will resist any external input into how safe theirs is.

“Algorithmic Discrimination Protections” – only covers what is already enshrined in law as discrimination, like race and gender. Google has always been keen to not fail on this one.

“Data Privacy” – again, won’t be an issue, in the US. Google does have problems with using a global network of servers storing the data from particular countries who do not like that practice.

“Notice and Explanation,” argues that users should know whether an automated system is being used by a company in the first place by providing “generally accessible plain language documentation” that includes “clear descriptions” of how the system functions.

This is a big problem for Google. While they can cite commercial sensitivity for many things, they will struggle to simply explain how the machine learning does what it does. Already support staff cannot explain decisions that affect the account. However, the language of the guidelines also mention calibrated to the level of risk based on the context, and Google could argue that there is no risk, therefore nothing needs explaining. And they would have a point. Results can be judged daily, and the service discontinued if not satisfactory.

“Human Alternatives, Consideration, and Fallback” – this is the biggie.

“You should have access to timely human consideration and remedy by a fallback and escalation process if an automated system fails, it produces an error, or you would like to appeal or contest its impacts on you,” the blueprint says. “Human consideration and fallback should be accessible, equitable, effective, maintained, accompanied by appropriate operator training, and should not impose an unreasonable burden on the public.”

Google Ads suspends advertisers based on risk profiles created by machine learning. Such suspensions, from the dominant search advertising platform, can destroy livelihoods.

Google suspends accounts that look and feel like bad advertisers, without proof, and without much in the way of genuine recourse.

Google Ads is trending towards doing without humans altogether, and this is exactly the type of law we need to stop such things from happening. We cannot have a world where “the computer decided” is the final word.

10 Years of Ideas – A Recap

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This site began with my opinion that vertical farming of lettuce could not be profitable. The original example, SkyGreens in Singapore – well their site has not been updated in 8 years. Even so, many similar businesses are seemingly thriving. There is still a major problem – they all only grow lettuce and micro-greens – neither of which will solve hunger in the world.

The curved Apple Watch (2014) never arrived.

Stem cells are already being used to repair humans. This new discovery means it is highly likely that within a decade or two we will be able to repair virtually any damage to our bodies. 2014, and happening today.

In 2014 I kinda predicted BeReal. Well, what is next after BeReal: The next step forward would be real-time video updates – literally push a button and people you are connected to online can watch what is happening.

Spoken website navigation (2016) hasn’t happened yet, although the younger generation love Google searching with their voice

2017 – I absolutely called dark kitchens, but I called them kitchens in a box. My idea is better, they are portable.

And the same year I wrote about self-driving wheelie bins, two years before someone made one.

In 2019 I predicted the 360 Degree Mirror – it will be huge for whoever brings it to market.

The pandemic got me thinking about fake news, and I worked out a solution – truth panels.

Meanwhile, everyone is talking about metaverses (well, only Zuckerberg) and I have a way of making it work. It needs to be based on playing roles that are just like real life. A mashup of Second Life, Animal Crossing and Minecraft.

And finally, a prediction from 2020 that isn’t true yet, but we are strongly heading in that direction – governments are going to outlaw any actions derived from misinformation

Purposefully Raceless Given Names

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The pop star YoungBoy has the real name of Kentrell DeSean Gaulden. That would make it harder to get equal opportunities in the US, because it is almost impossible that he could be white, asian or latino.

If we wanted to end this, it won’t happen from black people giving their kids white names, or vice versa. Few people care about equality to go that far.

But we could come up with totally new names – not so unusual these days anyway – that are deliberately not favoured by any race or social status.

DeSean is a good start, because white folk already have Shaun/Sean/Shawn with different spellings. So a new spelling could be adopted by all, equally. Shaurn. It can be used to name the kids of progressive types of all colors. As a statement that has fewer downsides. And once it got publicity – a name with purpose – watch it take off!

Alternatively, because of how many latinos are in the US, and they are kinda/sorta a less polarised (black and white) race, blacks and whites could start giving their kids latino names, like Rosa.

AKA ethnically ambiguous names

AR Status

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Augmented Reality glasses are coming.

They will show us information about the places around us (especially stores).

They will show us the name and role of people at work.

But for strangers, there will be nothing. Privacy etc.

Unless… they choose to transmit something. It is unlikely to be anything personal because everyone, even criminals, will be able to read it, on their AR screen, when they look at you.

But it could be a status you set, maybe temporarily, more like what people adorn their cars with…

  • Go The 49ers!
  • Don’t Waste Water!
  • Single and Looking
  • DTF
  • They/them
  • Yes, it is a real Gucci bag
  • I am 6ft 7, no need to ask
  • I was born here, just like you
  • I just need $3 for some food
  • $75 for a BJ

Of course if this becomes a thing, expect it to be exploited by scammers as well.