Social Networks and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

I’ve recently begun to explore the idea that social networks could follow the successful Wikipedia model and become non-profit services managed in open source, with total transparency, without any kind of advertising and simply trying to respond adequately to the needs of their users.

The internet advertising model is exhausted. It began by copying traditional print formats, then we saw Yahoo!’s segmentation based on the section of the catalog in which the ad was found; Google then did it according to the search term; while Facebook was able to garner the smallest detail of our online behavior; but the reality is that we are tired of being a product bought and sold by social networks.

Hyper-segmented advertising should be banned, because it uses variables of our behavior that should never have been for sale or available to anyone. Meta’s supposed mission, expressed as “we foster communities and make the world a more united place” translates, in practice, as “we are trying our best to get you to spend as much time as possible here, so you will reveal more information about yourself that we can sell to advertisers”. Hypocrisy writ large. The relationship between social networks and users is a clear example of the prisoner’s dilemma: rational agents who could collaborate for mutual benefit who instead betray each other for individual reward.

However, the success of the Wikipedia model demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to align the interests of participants: the encyclopedia is undoubtedly the largest and most up-to-date compendium of human knowledge, and only bothers us on occasion by asking for donations in a reasonably respectful manner, it is hugely successful when it does so and has abundant reserves that guarantee its functioning, and its open source management structure is transparent, guided by a few rules established and agreed by its community. When Wikipedia appeared, I used to criticize teachers who told their students “don’t use it, anyone can edit it and it is not a reliable source”… time and experience have shown how backward they were and, above all, how wrong they were.

A long time ago, at an event where we shared the stage, I had the opportunity to talk for a while with Jimmy Wales and ask him why he has never wanted advertising. Those were different times: Google’s advertising at that time was limited to small text inserts that were neither intrusive nor annoying, and going down that route would have generated a lot of business for the foundation, and it could have used the money to further its activities. Wales’ answer was simple: commoditizing the model would only lead to problems. First, because an encyclopedia is no place for advertising, and second, because those who collaborate with Wikipedia by writing and editing would then go on to claim — rightly — their share of the profits, and to do so for different reasons than those that lead them to do so now. More than 20 years later, his reasoning remains impeccable.

In which case, could a similar non-profit model be possible for other functions, such as social networks? For example, Mastodon, which while still far from successful, is an attempt to create support for something that people want, through open source and a non-profit model. But could it be more successfully generalized and implemented? After all, relying on big tech for activities as important as searching, social relations, and e-commerce has shown us the fragility of a model that does not consider its users, society as a whole, as shareholders, but as mere raw material to be sold to the highest bidder and that is only interested in making money for the company’s shareholders.

What would be the real cost of putting together the resources necessary for the development, storage and operation of a social network? Maintaining and improving the code repository, financing the necessary bandwidth, infrastructure and storage, and dedicating resources to the maintenance of a social network through a few transparent rules, at a time when Jimmy Wales himself is considering incorporating algorithms into Wikipedia, is feasible and could be financed through donations, therefore responding to the interests of its users rather than those of the venture capitalists or the greedy shareholders behind a giant corporation.

We could create an online repository that we pay for according to the information we upload to it, that allows us to label that information simply as private, for friends or public, and a series of mechanisms that allow us to define who is in each group, together with a series of operating and interaction rules that are managed in an open and transparent way. Would it work?

Would it be possible to develop a mission such as “connecting the world and people”, but in a genuine, authentic and real way, without the need to objectify users and put everything at the service of an advertising model that the vast majority of us abhor? Is it feasible to apply the Wikipedia model to a functionality such as social networks? Wouldn’t the best way to avoid the prisoner’s dilemma be, precisely, to avoid becoming prisoners? Or would such a model, in a capitalist society, be an impossible paradox?

(En español, aquí)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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