I have some ideas about what could compete with Facebook/Twitter

Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, a co-chairman of the Economic Security Project and a senior adviser at the Roosevelt Institute opines in the New York Times:

“No one knows exactly what Facebook’s competitors would offer to differentiate themselves.”

I have some ideas (most apply to Twitter too):

1. That it guarantees that I am always messaging or receiving messages from parties that I can clearly and absolutely accurately identify, with ease.

2. That I am targeted in an at least a 95% perfect way, so that my already way too scarce attention span is not being further wasted away by irrelevant/useless advertising/information.

3. That it shares with the participants 50-50 all advertising revenues generated by exploiting their data. Either to each one his respective production quota, or by means of helping to fund a universal basic income.

4. That it does it utmost to keep out all those redistribution or polarization profiteers whom, with their messages of hate or envy, can destroy our societies.

5. That it swears never ever to form any type of joint venture, with any type of Big Brother.

PS. Should we at least, as a minimum-minimorum, not require all social media with over a million followers, to openly publish the algorithms they use to maximize their ad revenues?

https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2017/11/those-bothering-us-and-wasting-our.html

Keep your eyes on the ball, Cambridge Analytica is not it.

The whole Cambridge Analytica affair, which came about when some limited Facebook data on 87 million people was presumably misappropriated, seems now used a lot to hide the fact that the existence at Facebook of much more detailed data on 2.2 billion people poses, almost by definition, a bigger problem.

Since regulations might come, whether we like it or not, like many I have been giving some thoughts on how to regulate Facebook. This is what I have come up with. First of all, let us avoid many complicated hard to understand rules and go for some very simple few ones. Among these I would suggest: 

Have Facebook respect our very scarce attention span by limiting the ads it generates to a maximum of 3 per person on a per hour on line basis.

Prohibit all data collection on truly private matters such as political, religious or sexual preferences.

And foremost a total prohibition on handing over any data to government agencies. The last thing we need is for Facebook and similar to enter into profitable "Big Brother is Watching You” joint ventures with governments. I am from Venezuela, and I have seen enough damage having been caused by governments taking over traditional media, to want to think about these being able to exploit social media. Can you imagine Maduro using our Facebook data to decide with much more precision, who to give his food-boxes to?

Farfetched? In Venezuela, the government of President Nicolás Maduro is arresting and detaining—in horrific conditions—teenagers who use Facebook to call on friends to attend anti-government demonstrations

We "The Resistance", might urgently need to create alternative underground social media.

PS. Of course I would love to see some of the advertising revenues we allowed Facebook to earn, return to us whose data is being exploited, perhaps by means of helping to fund a Universal Basic Income. 

@PerKurowski

Since you don’t eat gold-bars, just redistributing of wealth solves very little, or even nothing.

The Guardian writes: “An alarming projection produced by the House of Commons library suggests that if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were to continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world’s wealth by 2030… equating to $305tn” “Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030”, April 7, 2018.

How awfully unjust… but… how do you productively convert that wealth into the products or assets that could be useful for the 99%, without unexpected consequences or without most wealth just going to a 1%, or less, of some new filthy-rich wealthy?

How much value of that $305tn of wealth would just evaporate by the redistribution? And what would that do to the value of the then projected $152 wealth in the hands of 99%?

For instance what would happen to the price of a Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi”, in which, someone very wealthy, agreed to freeze $450 million of his main-street purchase capacity? How do you turn that wealth into something the poorer of the 99% need?

Where would the stock market value head?

Where would the interest rate, for instance on public debt go?

Where would the prices of houses head?

And if wealth gets too much distributed, who is going to demand that which only the really wealthy 1% can afford to demand, and which creates a lot of jobs that would otherwise not exist?

It is amazing how much discussions there are about the need to redistribute wealth without any consideration to what that redistribution would entail. Could that be because that is not in the interest of any redistribution or polarization profiteers?

As I see it there is much more to be gained by capturing more income before it has been converted into wealth assets. Just redistributing existing wealth is a one-shot unsustainable top-down approach.

Much better is a very modest starting Universal Basic Income where you little by little begin to build up a societal dividend that will keep the redistribution and polarization profiteers at bay. And that is of course why the latter hate UBI… as it eats into the value of their franchise.

And of course, in order to fund that UBI you must find sustainable sources of income…like on the advertising revenues of Facebook and alike… like a special tax on revenues generated under the protection of an intellectual property right… like a special tax on revenues generated by those benefiting from close to monopoly high market shares… like a tax on whatever causes pollution and otherwise threatens our pied-a-terre… and so on

Those bothering us and wasting our limited and valuable attention span on social media should not be able to do so at a zero marginal cost.

Those who on social media send us their advertisements, surely pay Google and Facebook the most, if we respond to their ads. In that sense all those players have a vested interest in targeting us as good as they can. 

But if they do not target us adequately, the marginal cost of that for them is zero.

And that is not good for us. That because we the ad-recipients have to pay the cost of using up too much of our limited attention span on ads, info and fake news we do not really need.

So therefore if all who we have not directly designated as friends, had to pay us something for contacting us on social media; like a one hundred of a $ cent, I am sure the Google and Facebook would be a bit more concerned about not wasting our time... and would then target us even better.

Nowadays they generously allow us to message them with an “I am not interested”. But, is that just not too late? We have already been bothered and since there are millions of vendors out there, I would hate to look forward to a future of having to waste years of my life sending “I am not interested” replies.

PS. Although sometimes we should not ignore it could be of much benefit to us to be targeted by something outside our comfort zone, so as to avoid incestuous intellectual degeneration.

PS. Potential Big Brothers’, redistribution profiteers plus ambulance chasers on web, are closing in on big tech and social media. Therefore it behooves Google and Facebook and similar, to team up with us who provide them all data, sharing advertising profits 50-50. I have some ideas about that. 

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-most-forceful-adblocker-is-limited.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2015/09/ad-blockers-do-not-allow-any.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-ideal-adblocker-besides-earning-on.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2015/03/i-want-net-40-percent-of-revenues.html

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2015/06/for-1us-i-will-look-for-30-seconds-with.html

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2014/06/should-not-google-and-other-public-eyes.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.ca/2007/06/in-search-of-answers-on-search-engines.html

Who’s to save me from an auto-incestuous intellectual degeneration, when being fed info based on my own preferences?

I have some preferences and Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media feed me based on these. And so the more Goggle, Facebook, Twitter and other social media gets to know my preferences the more I will be entering into an incestuous relation with myself… in other words the more I run the risk that my intellect might incestuously degenerate.

Who is to supply me the diversity I need in order to find out any new preferences in life?

So, for a starter, it looks that, as a minimum minimorum, I need a copyright of my own preferences.

Who wants to be my agent, marketing my attention span of 64 30-second ad spots daily, so as to maximize my returns?

For 8 hours I am willing to look at adds 1 minute an hour, and for other 8 hours 3 minutes per hour.

That adds up to attention span availability for ads per day, equal to 64 30-second spots.

Who is willing to be my agent marketing my attention span of 64 30-second spots per day so as to maximize my returns?

The agent would have to guarantee I am not bothered over this attention span allotment of 64 30-second spots per day.

I would accept payment in cash or products, like being able to see a movie that interests me. 

I would accept paying my agent, either in cash or by ceding to him, some of my 64 30-second spots per day.

Ad-blockers might be especially interested in representing my attention span.

For 1US$, I will look for 30 seconds, with reasonable interest, at any unsolicited ad, directed to me on the web.

I need legal advice of how to register a copyright of my own preferences as a consumer and as a human being. Why should that not be possible? Does that not include even more intimate and I would hold creative content than what most copyrighted books have? 

Now if I get that copyright then I would make the following public offer: 

For 1US$ (revisable), I will look for 30 seconds, with reasonable interest, at any unsolicited ad directed to me through any social media or any other site I visit while travelling the web. 

I hereby declare that I am a great consumer and I have a good history of easily falling for offers on the web. That said, nothing here should be interpreted as a commitment to purchase anything or to otherwise follow or do what is suggested in any ad for which I have been paid a royalty.

I will then contract an ad-blocker so as only those advertising sufficiently interested in me so as to be willing to pay me to see their ad have access to me. Depending on the efficiency by which I am served, and the little I would get bothered by unauthorized access to me, I will offer the ad-blocker up to 30% of any income derived by me in royalties on my copyright on my own preferences.

Google, Facebook, Twitter take notice: I already bought the tuxedo shirt I was looking for! Take me off that ad list!

How long is my already fulfilled intention to buy a tuxedo shirt, now going to pursue me on the web… on social media? I mean sort of every hour and ad on tuxedo shirts pops up.

There should be a way to notify the googles, the twitters and the facebooks of this world, that I already bought a shirt and have no intentions to buying another one soon… but then they might not be interested in doing such a thing… since they might prefer to keep alive the advertising tuxedo-shirt vendors’ illusion that I will buy a shirt from him.

PS. Can I get a copyright on my preferences and my life?

Shamelessness is taking over the web!

The big web players are becoming more and more shameless… and there seems to be nothing that can stop them…

Initially they were quite respectful of your information… lately I have seen messages reading like “we will import your address book”… and, as a token, we will not store your email and password. Holy moly!

We might need a Global Web Constitution, and Inspection Panels, to get along well with the Googles and Facebooks of this world

The role of a Constitution is foremost to defend the citizens from government abuses. In this respect, and since one of the most important issues of our time is how to guarantee acceptable relations between us, the small users, and they, the gigantic information and or knowledge dissemination machines that govern so much of how we communicate, and handle so much of private information on us, like Google and Facebook, one could say that we are in a dire need of a Web Constitution. 

Also, “Don’t be evil”, is for instance, a company motto of Google and which supposedly precludes them from manipulating rankings to put their advertising or content partners higher in their search results. That sounds great… exactly how it should be… but, how can we make certain that the supposedly is for real and that a company follows its motto and declared principles, and that we can trust it as much as we should, for ours and theirs benefit? Perhaps Google and Facebook should establish something like the Inspection Panel of the World Bank, which is there to guarantee, to the rest of the world, that the World Bank follows the rules and principles it has itself declared to follow. 

The last thing we citizens need is for these tech-giants to enter into joint venture agreements with Big Brother.

PS. This is a speculation which resulted from a conversation with my daughter Alexandra Kurowski

PS. And, for me, when managing knowledge, it is also extremely important to make sure that does not pose any treat to the biodiversity of knowledge development… as we can never know where the next world saving idea can come from.

PS. Below more comments related to this theme!

https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2019/05/i-have-some-ideas-about-what-could.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2014/07/facebook-i-want-to-be-happy-so-if-you.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2007/06/in-search-of-answers-on-search-engines.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2014/05/if-erasing-google-must-be-sure-it-is.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2013/12/we-need-personal-drones-more-than.html

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2007/09/some-of-gods-greatest-gifts-are.html
http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2014/06/should-not-google-and-other-public-eyes.html

The keeping the big lean tax

No matter how optimistic we can be about that all the assets the US government acquires during the current financial crisis will be fairly priced, there is no doubt that the whole crisis is going to be extremely expensive for the public sector. The costs will have to be paid by taxes or, in its absence, by inflation.

In this respect society has a vested interest in finding new equitable ways of how to pay for it, and that these are aligned with the new global realities and interfere as little as possible with the recovery of the economy. The following is a second proposal that follows up on “An income tax on profits from intellectual-property monopolies.”

The keeping the big lean tax: Tax progressiveness based on market share.

There is nothing wrong with a corporation striving to obtain a large market share. Indeed since it is the result of having a better motivated and better organized commitment to exploit comparative advantages in order to satisfy the market with better products or services at better prices, the fight for more market share benefits us all.

That said, while the market share grows, for all the good reasons, growing market powers might tempt the corporation to use competitive tools of dubious nature which could diminish the marginal returns for the society, to such an extent that they could perhaps even turning into costs that erode all previously obtained benefits.

I therefore propose we introduce tax progressiveness based on market shares. For instance if a corporation has below 10 percent of market share a 30% income tax rate applies but, if it has a 100 percent market share then it should be taxed at for instance a 50% rate, with a linear function for the in-betweens. Alternatively, if we want to avoid making the “after-tax” subsidies of inefficiencies higher it could be a progressive sales tax.

Of course the market share tax is not be applied to those corporations who have the financial returns on their activities otherwise regulated, such as the electricity distribution companies.

Of course in banking where the bigger-you-are-the-more- it-hurts-when-you-fall-on-us, a tax on size should be immediately applied, before we run out of the small local banks that do not need the credit rating agencies to know us.

PS. In the case of some behemoths, like Facebook, I prefer they help fund an unconditional Universal Basic Income with 40-50% of the ad revenues they obtain exploiting our own personal data.