** Navigating Climate Change Depends on the Open Web
(** Denotes a second bliki appendage added 8/17/2018, below.)
In blogs we linked to each other's ideas. In facebook people link to other people, not their ideas. A facebook user links to another facebook user by typing their name with a prepended '@' sign.
Blogs = ideas. Facebook = people.
Facebook discourages linking to a user's post (idea) in these ways: a) facebook frequently changes their interface and policies, and b) no link to a specific facebook post is human-readable. You'll find no embedded dates or human-readable names in a hyperlink pointing to a facebook blog post.
Daisychaining
On a blog you very quickly can get up to speed on an idea from blog A, post A1 and add onto it in your own blog B, post B1.
Blogger A won't notice your citation right away but if they do, they can daisy-chain your idea in with theirs on post A2. Or they can reject your idea and daisy-chain their own ideas post A1 and post A2 into post A3.
Daisy-chaining of ideas gives you a sense of traction. It makes you feel smart. Effective.
Daisy-chaining of people, on the other hand, is fun for a while. Then it gets old. You feel like a stalker. You feel stuck.
When you "name it to claim it" you progress. A term names a concept and moves the writer and readers to the next obstacle.
It's hard to define new terms like "dark ads" from within facebook (see dark ads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_advertising) without sounding like you're explain-a-thon-ing yourself. Without sounding like you're talking down to them.
It's hard to get a new term like "dark ads" to catch on within facebook unless you're popular and the type of person people tend to follow and parrot. Come to think of it - no. Even if you're popular, people won't use new terms like "dark ads" you're trying to encourage them to use because people fear looking too smart on facebook.
If nobody yet knows what "dark ads" mean, they won't leave a comment on your facebook post, and you'll feel stupid. So you'll leave a comment to your own post, that comment being a link to the definition of "dark ads" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_advertising) with the definition pasted in a comment below that comment. And again you sound like you're talking down to them.
Now you're talking to yourself.
You want to forget the whole episode, some of these facebook people are your high school friends who don't want to talk about dark ads or hear about dark ads. So you duck out for a few days.
The conversation that used to take half a day takes six years.
-----------------------------
*UPDATE 1 7/28/2018: "Dark Ads" as a term catching on?
**UPDATE 2 8/17/2018: Jaron Lanier, while promoting his latest book asking people to quit their social media accounts, told journalist Kara Swisher that platforms centered on an interest or activity tend to be less political and attract fewer trolls than those focused only on personalities:
Blogs = ideas. Facebook = people.
Daisychaining
On a blog you very quickly can get up to speed on an idea from blog A, post A1 and add onto it in your own blog B, post B1.
Blogger A won't notice your citation right away but if they do, they can daisy-chain your idea in with theirs on post A2. Or they can reject your idea and daisy-chain their own ideas post A1 and post A2 into post A3.
Daisy-chaining of ideas gives you a sense of traction. It makes you feel smart. Effective.
Daisy-chaining of people, on the other hand, is fun for a while. Then it gets old. You feel like a stalker. You feel stuck.
Terms Propel Conversations
On blogs you can assign a name to a new concept such as dark ads that other blogs pick up on and use. They use it because they can so easily embed a hyperlink to the definition of that term dark ads.When you "name it to claim it" you progress. A term names a concept and moves the writer and readers to the next obstacle.
It's hard to define new terms like "dark ads" from within facebook (see dark ads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_advertising) without sounding like you're explain-a-thon-ing yourself. Without sounding like you're talking down to them.
It's hard to get a new term like "dark ads" to catch on within facebook unless you're popular and the type of person people tend to follow and parrot. Come to think of it - no. Even if you're popular, people won't use new terms like "dark ads" you're trying to encourage them to use because people fear looking too smart on facebook.
If nobody yet knows what "dark ads" mean, they won't leave a comment on your facebook post, and you'll feel stupid. So you'll leave a comment to your own post, that comment being a link to the definition of "dark ads" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_advertising) with the definition pasted in a comment below that comment. And again you sound like you're talking down to them.
"Dark advertising is a type of online advertising visible only to the advert's publisher and the intended target group.
Dark advertising allows a publisher to send different adverts to different target audience groups where it would be disadvantageous for the audience of one target group to see the adverts intended for another. This increases the success rate of the publisher's advertising campaign." ... more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_advertising
Now you're talking to yourself.
You want to forget the whole episode, some of these facebook people are your high school friends who don't want to talk about dark ads or hear about dark ads. So you duck out for a few days.
The conversation that used to take half a day takes six years.
-----------------------------
*UPDATE 1 7/28/2018: "Dark Ads" as a term catching on?
P&P - printed and published by - all physical stuff (leaflets, balloons, pens) must have two addresses (printer and publisher) so that the issuer can be challenged
— Gordon Guthrie (@gordonguthrie) July 27, 2018
Dark Ads can't be challenged
**UPDATE 2 8/17/2018: Jaron Lanier, while promoting his latest book asking people to quit their social media accounts, told journalist Kara Swisher that platforms centered on an interest or activity tend to be less political and attract fewer trolls than those focused only on personalities:
Well, I always worry. Anyway, so, with Microsoft stuff like ... I would say with GitHub and with LinkedIn, you see a lower level of trolls and a lower level of just acid-y horrible personalities and conflicts and ridiculous pissing matches. And I think the reason why is that people have something to accomplish while they’re there. It’s not just pure social competition. It’s not just pure mind games. And the theory I put forward in the book is there’s actually a switch in our brains between being a lone wolf and a pack wolf. And when you’re a lone wolf, you pay attention to your environment, you’re a naturalist. And when you’re a pack wolf, you pay attention to politics.
And as long as there’s something real for you to pay attention to like your career or your code or just something real, I think people tend to not be as horrible to each other. I think that’s why there’s like a little less horror in some parts of the internet than others. And I think one of the problems with situations like Facebook and Twitter, in particular, is people get so caught up in just relationships with others that they lose track of reality, and so they do tend to spin out of control.
