Mediations #29: Distributed Discussions

A subtle shift in an Internet user's behavior might change the world.

Back in the late 90s, the Internet wasn’t readily available in my hometown. As it was costly, my parents couldn’t afford it. At that time, blogs were the TikTok or Instagram of today. By the time the Internet became accessible, social media websites like Facebook and Twitter were in full swing. Naturally, I caught the end of the blogging era and grew up with social media. Yet, I still dug into blogs and finally jumped on the train around 2011 and published my first blog article (on Blogger, neither the post nor the blog survived).

One thing I learned from the era in which blogs were reigning the Internet is that most discussions took place in the comments section of the article or were posted as a follow-up blog post. The blog author could have a conversation with readers in one place. Discussions were centralized while the content was distributed. This has changed.

Before social media, forums popped up first to provide a place for people to get together around a shared interest. People having a conversation about all possible topics gave many people a voice, as they didn’t have to build and maintain their blogs and still be part of the Internet. However, forums hit blogs hard as they took the discussions away from the blogs and into the forums. Then, forums became centralized in places like Reddit. Social media took this to another level.

Reddit and other social media platforms centralized both the discussions and the content. Today, when someone reads any blog post they enjoy, they share it on social media with their comments. However, social media algorithms are trained to demote posts that include links as they take people away from the platform (of course, Meta/X/LinkedIn don’t want you to leave even for a second). That further encourages people to copy/paste some of the text from the original post (or share a screenshot) and share their thoughts about it—not even allowing the original post to be reachable directly.

The punishment of algorithms leads people back to forums to have a conversation there. One group discusses an idea over Facebook, a different group talks about it over X, another one starts a debate on HackerNews or Reddit, while yet another group takes it behind closed doors and runs a lengthy discussion over private chat groups.

What could have been a meaningful discussion turns into a set of siloed monologues.

By distributing the discussion across multiple platforms, we are creating echo chambers. The exponential growth of echo chambers is one of the most significant problems facing the Internet (and, to a certain extent, the world). Trying to gain a different perspective became a luxury skill that a few people possess. This evolution contributed to the polarization of the world as people sporadically see contrasting ideas and become less susceptible to outsiders.

Additionally, social media gave everyone a voice. I’m an advocate for freedom of speech, but against hate speech. Anyone on social media can comment on anything, but sometimes it’s better if they don’t. People brew harmful thoughts within their echo chambers and stir each other up. The simmering thoughts that don’t encounter any contrarian ideas while they are tiny waves overflow the echo chamber like a tsunami. If all comments were centralized, people could have seen diverse thoughts, and each blog owner could reduce hate by moderating comments.

The last problem I see is that having fewer comments on the original blog article forced authors’ hands to abandon their blogs and join the social media train and contribute to the dopamine economy. The Internet has become a graveyard of abandoned blogs because people couldn’t see any reaction to the articles they posted (I acknowledge that we have gazillion more blogs than in the 90s; most of them are garbage, and it’s impossible to find all of them, let alone react). Bloggers moved to social media platforms and put their content behind closed doors of X, Facebook or Instagram. Once open and free blogs (and thoughts) began to feed the insatiable profit machine of social media. Meanwhile, most of the remaining bloggers have removed comments from their blogs because they only receive spam comments.

I argue that open and centralized discussions (on distributed content) are far better for humanity. They provide an opportunity for diverse views to be expressed and coexist. It also gives the author a chance to learn from the audience and correct their mistakes. Otherwise, we all live in echo chambers (often for the profit of big corporations) seeing people like us, taking the same perspectives, complaining about the same concerns, and never learning that other views exist in the world.

When we centralize conversations, ideally in the original location that is open to everyone, all perspectives can coexist.

I acknowledge that not all blogs offer a commenting mechanism, forcing everyone to move discussions elsewhere (the chicken and egg problem). Often, the reason for this choice comes down to maintaining infrastructure, comments, and spam. Many bloggers (rightfully) don’t want to deal with that as they want to focus on the content. One or two real comments per year don’t justify the cost and effort (I do maintain a commenting system on my blog). However, once the blogger decides to have it, we owe a response in the place it’s published, if we are to respond.

Good to Great

I share max three things I found interesting, sorted by good to great.

Good: The question,“What is the purpose of a corporation? Is it solely to maximise shareholder value, as some free-market purists argue? Or does it bear responsibility to a broader set of values and stakeholders?” led a group of researchers to study Chinese companies that are closer to temples and how they distribute their profits. Read the “In China, companies that are closer to temples are more generous to shareholders: religion subtly shapes economic behaviour” by Zhangxin (Frank) Liu.

Better: “Technology is the active human interface with the material world.” A great definition of technology from my favorite author. She wrote this in 2005, and I still haven’t seen a better definition. “A Rant About Technology” by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Great: “I deeply believe in environments that cause people to accomplish bigger and better things than what they imagined they could have done,” says Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify. Listen to Tobi Lütke’s great conversation with Stripe’s John Collison.

Until next time,

Candost

P.S. I signed up to Berlin Triathlon (June 6-7) to challenge myself and train during winter. If you wanna join me (or join another event), just send me a email/message/comment and we can form an accountability group.