Social Media Outputs: Aloft Like a Cooling Hot Air Balloon?
August 4, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I found the assertions in “”They Need Us. We Don’t Need Them: The Fall of Twitter Is Making the Trolls and Grifters Desperate” in line with my experience. The write up asserts:
The grifters that make up the troll-industrial complex are not okay.
If you want the political spin on this statement, please, navigate to the source document. I want to focus on the observation “They need us. We don’t need them.” I view social media companies and those who have risen to fame on clicks and hyperbole are going to try to inflate every more colorful balloons. Their hope is to be seen as rulers of the sky. F-35s, addled doctors flying Cessnas, and hobbyist drones are potential problems for the hot air crowd.
The colorful balloons compete for attention. What happens when the hot air source cools? MidJourney would not depict a balloon crash into a pre-school playground. Bummer.
Let’s go back in time. In the 1980s, there were two financially successful and highly regarded business information commercial databases. One of the two companies had the idea that it could generate more revenue by pulling out of the online distribution agreements upon which the commercial database ecosystem depended. I don’t expect anyone reading this essay to remember DataStar, Dialcom, ESA Quest, or the original LexisNexis service. The key factoid is that if one wanted to deliver an electronic business information product, the timesharing outfits were the enablers. Think of them as a proto-Google.
How did that work out?
After quite a bit of talking and thinking, the business information company resigned itself to the servitude under which it served. It was decades later that Web accessible content and paywalls began to make it possible for a handful of companies to generate without the old timesharing intermediaries.
Few know the names of these commercial databases which once were the cat’s pajamas.
The moral of the story, from my point of view, is that people or services which view themselves as important enough to operate outside of an ecosystem have to understand the ecosystem. Alas, too many individuals perceive themselves as being powerful magnets. Sure, these individuals or companies have a tiny bit of magnetic power. However, without the ecosystem and today’s enablers, the reality is that their “power” is not easily or economically amplified.
From my point of view, social media provided free, no friction amplification. For that reason, I want social media regulated and managed by responsible individuals. Editorial or content guidelines must be promulgated and enforced. The Wild West has be converted into a managed townhouse community. Keep in mind that I am a dinobaby, and I am not sure arguments about the “value” of social media will be processed by my aged mental equipment.
Just look around you in an objective manner. Nice environment, right? Now we have balloons of craziness drifting above in an effort to capture attention. What happens when the hot air source cools? Back down to earth and possibly without a gentle landing.
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2023
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