Parallel Build

Steven Palmer Public Seen by 424

So obviously it would irrational to purchase Twitter; due to its speculative price, the fact that we are its content and would be buying ourselves, its consumer capitalist design which is far from ideal and could be improved upon for a fraction of the cost.

The main challenge is getting enough people to shift over. People won't invest unless they know they know their contacts are going to be there and its going to function similar (albeit better) with little loss aversion (follower count).

So, perhaps to start; a simple website to present an alternative, graphical concept with explanation expanding on the Guardian article, as to why it would benefit them. Then a pledge action, something like "I promise to switch if 80% of my followers do, or 20% of network." With option to invest and buy fairshares straight away or later.

Then whenever Twitter censors trend, tweet or makes poor update, people can fuel their anger towards something constructive. #ForkTwitter! (weblink). Perhaps theres enough troll energy to purchase the NASDAQ, if not it can at least create an organised public voice to stalk and pressure Twitter into better representation.

Perhaps some financial engineering; create a referral system which pays people per referred user switch in some abstract currency which we'll distribute once pledge goal has been reached, out of investor cash. We could target influencers and use various other tactics, including media marketing to pull in the numbers.

Alternative build example.

Mark Hughes Tue 4 Oct 2016 12:28PM

I think avoiding the need to fund billions to buy Twitter the company offers a good potential alternative.

This then begs the question of how to fund a highly scalable infrastructure as well as the development and other activities needed by such a platform.

I suspect that there are many ways to address that, but one that I'm familiar with is the SAFEnetwork so I want to give it a mention in this thread - because it offers things that are probably unique which make it something requiring consideration. I won't derail this too much other than to mention it, and say that it could provide both massive scalability, guaranteed end-to-end privacy, and freedom from censorship, with next to zero cost. Literally just the funds to write the platform (one such project is already funded and I've contacted the founder to see what he thinks). I don't have much time to give to this effort myself (being committed to my own SAFEnetwork related project) but will be happy to answer queries and try to help things along if people are interested in this suggestion. More at http://safenetwork.org. I feel the need to say this is NOT blockchain tech, but something that will scale, be fast, immune to DDoS, censorship, and so on. It really is different to what most people are aware of at this point.

Steven Palmer Tue 4 Oct 2016 9:04PM

@happybeing indeed, we need decentralised and distributed infrastructure.

Priscilla Grim Wed 5 Oct 2016 12:09AM

If you want to parallel build just use the existing Twitter code: https://twitter.github.io/

Mark Hughes Thu 6 Oct 2016 1:56PM

Thanks Priscilla. This would not address the issues that remain a concern to me. Hence my "dismissing" the alternatives which Nathan mentioned which suffer from the same problems to a greater or lesser extent.

A SAFEnetwork chat application is a completely different beast: no servers to buy, be spied on, hacked, DDoS'd, raise revenue to run etc. and a tiny software project by comparison with any of the traditional solutions (server, federated etc.)

I have no doubt that a SAFEnetwork application will exist - probably several - but the difficulty for this will be mass adoption, and that is the great synergy between this cooperative proposal and SAFEnetwork.

SAFEnetwork can provide superior functionality (i.e. twitter with gauranteed privacy, security and freedom), a far better technical solution (sustainable, energy efficient, easy to fund), with far less difficulties (no billions to find, no ongoing subsciptinos, far lower software maintenance costs).

A cooperative of users who value twitter, and would easily see the benefits I'm highlighting here, can provide the mass adoption which is essential in turning a small chat application into a valuable public utility: an open free alternative social and media network.

Let's shoot for the moon! :smiley:

Nathan Schneider Wed 5 Oct 2016 3:32PM

I'd like to suggest that we should keep this conversation separate from this group. There are a good number of excellent projects to build alternative social media platforms: Diaspora, Friendica, GNUSocial, Twister. I recommend getting involved in those communities if you're interested in that.

This group is called Buy Twitter, and I think it's probably a good idea to keep the focus on creating vehicles that can enable the conversion of existing platforms to more cooperative models.

I fully support alternative social-media platforms. But I don't think this is the best place to develop a new one.

Hailey Cooperrider Thu 6 Oct 2016 12:31AM

Well said. I think the people who showed up here are here because of the level of interest in the possibility of a large scale cooperative buyout of an existing media giant. Parallel build discussions could derail.

Mark Hughes Thu 6 Oct 2016 12:52PM

Ok, I shall end my input if it isn't wanted (which I understand and respect), with a sign off summarising what I believe is more easily achievable, and a far more satisfactory solution than a cooperative buyout...

Firstly, the platforms Nathan mentions are not practical ways to supplant twitter IMO. At least not in the way that using SAFEnetwork definitely could be, and where there is already a funded project (Project Decorum) that could well support a decentralised twitter (and more).

The difference being: a SAFEnetwork twitter would be highly scalable without requiring massive resources to be gathered together to make it viable. So no need to fund a buyout or alternative infrastructure. Those are two enormous barriers to the buy-out proposal, or to any of the platforms which Nathan mentioned above.

A SAFEnetwork solution could start with two users, and then scale without anyone needing to generate a dollar up-front, nor for any user to pay a subscription. Even after a buy-out, revenue is going to have to come from somewhere to pay for twitter-coop, and that is a questionable business model in itself (which is of course why twitter is the laggard of surveillance capitalism).

On the other hand, for a SAFEnetwork solution, all that needs funding is a small scale software project, with one such project already funded and which has expressed interest (to me) in helping. So a GUI might be the bulk of the technical work here. So after a few tens or maybe $100k of development (probably far less as I think open source can achieve this - it is a small project IMO), very low ongoing running costs, that don't grow significantly with mass adoption.

These are big points which a buy out will have to address, but there are other reasons to consider the SAFE alternative. I much prefer something based on SAFEnetwork because it would provide complete end-to-end security, free of any centralised control, and impossible to censor, spy on, DDoS or hack.

Anyone wishing to discuss this further I'm happy to take it elsewhere as Nathan suggests, so as a starting point the following topic on SAFEnetwork forum is a place people can express interest (find me there as @ happybeing or on twitter as @ markhughes). Hope to see some of you on the forum:
https://safenetforum.org/t/taking-over-twitter-with-a-safe-twitter-chat-app/11435?u=happybeing

Having summed that up, @ntnsndr I will wish you and everyone here the best of luck. I will certainly join in any buy out if you get to that point, but would see it as only a partial solution and so am aiming higher! :-)

Nathan Schneider Thu 6 Oct 2016 3:06PM

Just to be clear, I don't mean to suppress Parallel Build discussions. Let's just keep them contained to threads like this. In my recent proposal, I included parallel builds as a possible activity for a social media cooperative. So let's keep the conversation going, but also aligned with the broader goal of the investment co-op.

Alanna Irving Sat 8 Oct 2016 8:35AM

If someone has a clear idea about how to approach parallel builds (an idea I'm sure will keep arising), I'd really encourage you to post it as a proposal in here. Then when it's inevitably brought up again, we can refer people to the group's decision about it. And if we ever want to revisit the decision, we can raise a subsequent proposal and have the context in place, to think through if anything's changed or what we may have learned at that future point.

Poll Created Sat 8 Oct 2016 4:00PM

Pursue cooperative business models for parallel builds Closed Tue 11 Oct 2016 3:01PM

Outcome

by Nathan Schneider Tue 25 Apr 2017 5:53AM

No objections to including this in the mix.

One way that I can see parallel builds operating in the context of the social-media investment cooperative would be for the co-op to invest, intentionally and selectively, in fair economic models for alternative social networks. This could be through such projects as:

Financing and adding value to user-owned nodes for decentralized, open-source networks like Diaspora and GNU Social
Investing in existing business models like Loomio's worker co-op
Innovate other models for financing the development of participant-centered social networks