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Jimmy Wales says his new social network, WT:Social, now has more than 160,000 members.
The platform says it will never sell user data and relies on "the generosity of individual donors" rather than ads.
Those who do sign up are added to a waiting list and asked to invite others, or choose a subscription payment.
It is positioning itself as a "news focused" place, and says members will be able to edit "misleading" headlines.
They will see the articles shared by their network in a timeline format, appearing with the newest first rather than algorithmically to try to appeal to their interests.
The subscription is £10 per month or £80 per year in the UK (€12 / €90 in Europe, $13 / $100 in the US).
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50460243
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:44AM (10 children)
We will not sell user data... We will not target ads... And when some users threshold is reached everything starts again. This happens all time.
For 10 GPP per month, or 80 per year, or maybe 90EUR per year, I would get a nice hosting and decide how and when to publish. In fact, my website hosting (an average, maybe not for a big business, but totally OK for hobbyist) with own domain is much cheaper. What was wrong with websites, again... Ah, yes, not much of capability to ddos attention, user just changed a site when it happened.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:07AM (9 children)
To be fair to this particular case, wikipedia never has done those things, in spite of being one of the oldest and most prominent "web 2.0"(remember when we called social media that?) sites, but then again it's also a socially controlled platform, where almost every level of control of it is open source or democratized somehow.
There's no reason to believe this new site will be like that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:42AM
There's also no reason to believe that Jimmy Wales would create a site that has almost the exact opposite philosophy of his last one.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:29PM (4 children)
What did you think about the Fram incident?
Do you trust Jimmy Wales, really, to choose an admin team that is not comprimised?
If philip cross is still allowed to auto propaganda post, last I checked, that doesn't give me much faith.
You cannot be 'oh just a little' propaganda, or just these people are allowed to, propaganda, itself, is always dangerous and the enemy of the human intellectual effort.
You tell me a lot by how much bullshit you tolerate, and whose.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:34PM (3 children)
I was completely unaware of the incident in question, because I don't usually follow internet drama.
But upon reviewing it, what I find is an as transparent as possible documentation of a relatively lightweight ban with a open appeals process.
You get nothing like that on any of the main social media sites. Twitter will permaban you based on a totally unstated basis with no meaningful appeal options. So will facebook. You're at the mercy of underpaid staffers following a guidebook written without your input, if not a totally uncaring algorithm looking for fucking swear words.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday November 21 2019, @11:20AM (2 children)
That is a difference, he seems at least to be trying.
I am more concerned about phillip cross, everyone knows this is a state actor and nothing is done.
And then, yeah, long term, I am not sure anyone can deliver what he is promising.
Could it be that computers are actually a-social? That there is no real way to form human bonds?
That transitioning to internet society is just the end of society?
We are trying to replace the real thing with a fake, and will go to any lengths to believe lead can be turned to gold?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 21 2019, @06:47PM (1 child)
I mean yeah, that's all true. But it's also not the first time in human history the structure of social interaction has been turned completely upside down by technology.
Imagine being the first people to live in cities and build your entire survival off barter and trade, while living immediately next to people you're not related to.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday November 22 2019, @02:28PM
Hmmm there seem to be some patterns that track even way back, cities don't work without trust any more than a software platform.
A car based system does not work without trust either, everyone 'trusts' that no one slashes tires or scratches their lambo. Or that no government agency remotely destroys their car computer because they don't like your politics, but this happened to me in the united states.
I saw this issue headed our way when I graduated in 2000, I wrote a book about it, for like 3 years I was obsessed with warning people that without some other basis of trust than the corporation or government, we were just building a prison. I have buy in to working on this problem, and a written record of being predictive on the subject.
For my own sanity I had to stop talking about it though until recently, but it sure is odd for me to hear this conversation now and all of the people who overlooked these obvious foundational design flaws back then are wringing their hands, whining how did we get here.
You cannot get out of a problem the say way you got in, and when you find yourself in a hole and want to get out, first you have to stop digging.
And they are not quite there yet, so down we go.
They are the ones who got rich so they should solve it, but Mr. Wales no matter how good of an attempt it is, appears to me to be using the same tools that got us here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:28PM
Generally I don't have positive experiences using Wikipedia. Although technical/engineering articles, especially in English and Russian versions, are relatively good and allow to obtain more knowledge with a nice bibliography, other parts are just trending as all other Internet services: They want to be "for everyone". Let's temporarily put away is it feasible for encyclopedia or not. The problem is that instead of slowly building all "dependencies" to be accessible and understood by everyone (which was common in e.g. these old FAQs) it becomes just simplified over all limits. This way, social-related articles are just repeating stereotypes, many times wrong and insulting, but well-highlighted in media and giving profits to advertisers. But the worst thing is with history-related - these are just copying the same disinformation parts, amplifying it by next citations. And although this can be minimized by citation of other sources, it cannot be done in Wikipedia - as credibility is measured in these cases in depth of citations. This measure is totally wrong with history. OK, in engineering it works, but in history it amplifies errors.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:01PM (1 child)
Maybe it's a bad example, but Walmart was actually really nice when Sam Walton ran it. He was a down to earth, nice guy. I trusted them back then. Today, it's a very different place. I doubt they deleted any data collected from back then.
The point is, all things eventually change for the worse. Some things age better than others, but nothing ages gracefully. Almost everything ends in an awful way.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Thursday November 21 2019, @01:58AM
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.x.html [ccel.org]
"We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before. Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic monarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards) went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First. So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just after it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored. The son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined. So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical manufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people, until suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion. Just recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. We have not any need to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty. It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold up the modern world. There is no fear that a modern king will attempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take no advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will take advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he is free from criticism and publicity. For the king is the most private person of our time. It will not be necessary for any one to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press. We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.
This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn oppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory of progress to allow. It must always be on the look out for every privilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong. In this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists. They are really right to be always suspecting human institutions; they are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child of man. The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people becomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say, I felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary. And then I caught my breath again: for I remembered that I was once again on the side of the orthodox."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.