The Future of Protesting

Posted on May 12, 2024 by Futures Broker

Public protests are not new, and not uncommon. These days they are evolving, perhaps sparked by the Reclaim Our Streets happy protests who were very prescient in their anti-car advocacy. Rather than simply being seen and heard, protests are increasingly aiming to be disruptive. The Extinction Rebellion regularly makes the new in this regard.

The very nature of disruptive protests mean that costs are borne by many, from everyday folk having their progress through the city hindered, to business, and of course policing. Climate protesters would argue that the hindrances they cause are an important aspect, to make their point heard. Yet the same people would argue that a white supremist rally would wrongly interfere with their day.

In the western world, where protesting has been generously allowed (and rightfully so) in recent history, the trend is towards punishment for disruptions, especially those that are purposefully designed to affect business operations. I expect that in the near future there will be codified controls and regulations that allow protests but in a more restricted way.

In-situ protests, outside a particular location that is meaningful, would probably continue unchanged. But for marches, I can see a new way emerging, a compromise between visibility and order.

Dedicated march journeys, from A to B
The journeys are in prominent places, with many viewers, like inner city pedestrian malls
Permits are required
Minimum numbers are required. Say 100 named people of which 80 need to attend or will be fined.
Names are confidential unless a crime is committed.

Ultimately it would not be too different to how buskers are often regulated and controlled. Initially there might be a great increase in the number of protests, but in the long term mostly only the larger, important rallies would be occurring.

While this sounds overly bureaucratic, it can also codify the right to protest, especially in cities like London where public spaces are increasingly being operated by corporations who can issue trespass notices.

Where It Came From: Attribution 2.0

Posted on December 9, 2023 by Futures Broker

Deep fakes and the like are a growing problem:

Politicians saying something they didn’t
Fake nudes of high school kids
Fake music that is illegal but is shared without a source

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.

The Next Twitter Won’t Be Social

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Futures Broker

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.

Everything, Everywhere – Better than Google (concept)

Posted on April 29, 2022 by Futures Broker

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 April 24, 2022 by Futures Broker

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.

Peak Clock / Fuzzy Time

Posted on March 4, 2022 by Futures Broker

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.