The Streisand Effect with Mike Masnick

32:29Because that's where it seems like a whole bunch of the problems come in. And then - Well, these aren't interoperable portals in general. Right. I mean, it's like, because like, you know, once, you know, I was kind of thinking, I was thinking back to Usenet, honestly, where it's like, yeah, you know, you had bad, terrible people on Usenet. Such bad shit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, depending on where you go, it's kind of risky, but you also had like kill files and you had different Usenet servers that would ban different groups, different - I mean, some of the early gaming groups I was in. Yeah.

33:01Like I was playing UO. Yeah. I mean, there was all sorts of stuff. But you had methods of dealing with it, but it was community-based. It wasn't like the president of Usenet has to decide which things are allowed and which are not. But as a community, we can sort of figure out. Or through individuals with kill files and stuff, you could say, look, I never want to hear from Ed again. So I'm going to make sure that I never have to deal with him. And so, you know, and I was like, that was like a better world. Whereas now, like everything, because like Reddit is fully in control of Reddit and Twitter is fully in control of Twitter, we're in this world where we are totally dependent on the decisions that they make.

33:45And, you know, like, yes, there is like one decider. And so, like, in some cases, maybe that is useful. but you know on the whole it feels like a less great world because the incentives that they have are also you know not always aligned with the the users and certainly not aligned with like um you know what what might be best for for different users it's always going to be a single view and usually it's like what is going to be the the biggest profit you know for for for us and so so i wrote this piece sort of like theorizing like what would it look like if we had a more interoperable you know protocol based world for these kinds of services and then i'd written a few more things about it and at some point in like 2018 um the knight institute of columbia asked if i would write a paper kind of outlining that idea and that made me really sit down and sort of think through it more systematically and i wrote this paper called Protocols, Not Platforms, which I went back and forth with them on editing.

34:53There were two folks at the Knight Institute who were really, really good, like amazing editors, like really challenged everything I wrote. And it was just like, but how would this work? Like, why would that, you know, and really made me, you know, work hard at getting that paper right. And they published that in 2019. and it got a little bit of attention early on and then it sort of died out and then um jack dorsey found the paper um and i kind of think i know how he did it i'm not entirely sure and and he he reached out and he was just like hey i read your paper um and i think we want to do that with twitter and right and so to take one step back like my thought in writing that paper to create that world.

35:44So I was sort of arguing that this world is a better world. And so every major platform would have a protocol that could be connected to the other. Or, yeah. I mean, there are a few different ways that it could be done. But basically, I was like, what can we do to take away the power of a Mark Zuckerberg or a Sergey Brin or whatever to control a huge portion of the internet was kind of the underlying thinking, but still have the benefits of these services, right? Like there are good things, but the problem comes in when, one, you're sort of stuck there, right? If you, like the example, and I use this in the paper and it comes up a lot, is like the email example where, compared to like Facebook, right?

36:32If I leave Facebook, and I mostly have, but when I leave Facebook, That means my family that uses Facebook, my cousins, my aunts and uncles that all stay in touch through Facebook, I no longer know what's going on with them because I don't want to deal with Facebook anymore. But email, like if I don't like my email provider, I can find a new email provider and I don't lose touch with everyone that I email because I can just import my address book over. and i said you know why why can't we make all of the internet services that we like more like the email example and less like the facebook example where where if i leave i can still stay in touch with people where's the incentive for the platforms to do this so yeah so if you read the protocols not platforms paper you see like i i tried to come up with a bunch of incentives to effectively convince the companies to recognize that there are potential benefits yes obviously they are losing control but my main pitch to them and this is the one that jack seemed to buy was um you also don't get blamed for everything anymore and so whether or not that is a a good thing or not it's just like because i and you know and the downs just so that i'm clear the downside is for them would be that they can no longer trap you there but in return right you're not totally at fault there's a well basically you know it's like when you know so this is not again not a perfect analogy but it's like you think of email email and spam right so everyone's sort of like trying to deal with spam but at no point are they like calling the ceo of email to testify before Congress because there's spam everywhere, right?

38:21You sort of recognize that it is a collective action issue and it's a collective problem that everyone has to try to work on in different ways. And you had, early on at least, you had different people sort of creating different spam fighting tools. And the discussion was over that. Like how do we better handle those things rather than, you know, you, Mr. CEO of email, have to fix this. I think where I'm a little confused, but forgive me for this, is that how does this deal with like trolls and spam and all that if if they have less responsibility than who does so if there was a yeah is this is this i guess federated is this what you're suggesting like the kind or is this forgive forgive my ignorance no no no it's it's it's not it's it's a little bit complex to wrap your head around it's complex for me to wrap my head around it and so it's fine it's important it's good to ask questions no so my thinking was that what happens is if it's and i didn't think of it as federated as in like mastodon right i mean we can get into like specific debates about the actual like technical infrastructure and how it's built i don't think that's as important the idea more was that if it is not wholly controlled by one company those companies can still you know have a responsibility in terms of keeping their part of it clean in order to keep users.

39:44Because now the way I looked at it was, you know, if, you know, so imagine a world in which there are lots of Twitters, and this is kind of the way I was thinking about it, that could all interoperate and communicate across each other. If Jack Dorsey, you know, at that time, still running Twitter, does something really stupid or enables too many nazis to be too nazi full then people will leave right right because there's now easy exit under this kind of system and therefore he has incentives to actually keep things clean now this is the part that some people get upset about which is like if it is a protocol then you could still have you know nazi twitter which is kind of what we have now which you can just say twitter now Yeah, or X, right?

40:37But in that world, I think they can be much more isolated. Now, this is partly theoretical in my belief. But also you would be building a site on top of a protocol. It would use the protocol. Thus, you would be visiting a site. Right. So you would still be using a site. And then, but you would have, one, you would have more control yourself because you could bring in your own algorithms or other people's algorithms. Or so, you know, other, you know. And use that to cordon off the Nazis rather than to promote them. To cordon off the Nazis. But again, there are different layers here in terms of the stack, in terms of who's doing which part of it.

41:20But you could still have room for a company like a Twitter, or now a Blue Sky, that has some moderation features. And if people really dislike the way that they're moderating, they could build their own. On the same protocol with the same users, with the same accounts. Right, exactly. And that's what Blue Sky is really doing. Blue Sky is on top of a protocol, or is it a protocol itself? No. So Blue Sky is on top of a protocol, the at protocol or AT protocol. And so what happened was that Jack decided that Twitter would do this. He was somewhat convinced by my paper and decided that he would hire a small team of engineers, give them some money, and have them go and build a protocol with the idea being that Twitter would adopt that protocol eventually.

42:09and so that was the plan that he sort of set in motion in late 2019 um and he you know he announced it on twitter and he gave a shout out to my paper but i had no official anything i had spoken to him um after he read the paper i had a couple conversations with him and i got an alert the night before he sent out that thread saying he was going to do it he was going to announce it but I had no role or any association with it. And then, well, COVID happened, which I think probably threw off timelines, but Twitter folks got a bunch of people who were interested in decentralized social media together in an online sort of chat space using Matrix, which is another decentralized protocol.

42:57And they basically talked about ideas for a really long time And it took Twitter really very, way too long, you know, basically another year and a half until they finally decided they were going to hire somebody to lead the Blue Sky Project. And then that took a while. And they eventually hired Jay Graber. But again, Jay very smartly said this needs to be separate. It can't be a part of Twitter. It needs to be independent from Twitter. Because otherwise someone could buy it and then ruin it. And destroy it. Yeah. We wouldn't want that to happen. Yeah. So pretty prescient on her part.

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47:26And so how did you end up on the board then? I was also in the thread and like 100 people mentioned me. So, I mean, I have no qualifications. I post a lot. I don't really know stuff. So, I mean, it's unfair you got it, but still. Yeah. So, I mean, basically, I mean, I'd known Jay. I'd known Jay from before all of this, actually. I had met with her kind of around when the protocols and platforms. This is Jay Graber, the CEO. Jay Graber, who's the CEO. I had met with her kind of when the paper came out through a mutual friend. She had read the paper and liked it, and we had lunch. and um just very quickly like i realized like she she internalizes she understood it better than i did and she understood my paper better than i did and i wrote it and that was like i was like wow this is that's impressive that that rocks as far as the ceo ceo of a website actually knowing how it works i'm not even being sarcastic here no i mean it was it was i it was really eye-opening and this is obviously before you know blue sky existed and then so she you know you know once Twitter announced Blue Sky, she had made it clear to them that she really wanted to run it.

48:35And Jack and Twitter really took a lot of time to actually realize that she should run it. And they interviewed a lot of other people. Again, I had no official association. I never got paid. I never had no contract or anything, but they actually had me interview people who might run the Blue Sky project at one point. That's really cool. yeah it was i was just kind of they just asked me and i said sure and then i gave them feedback um and i recommended that they hire jay though there were really good other people and so there was a board of people setting up blue sky just so that people know the organization so there was a board of people it was yeah it was mostly twitter people there were a few outsiders but it was mostly like senior executives at twitter um and they were still at twitter at the time and then they left or and and no oh oh in terms of the people they interviewed yeah none of the people they interviewed were at twitter sorry all the people that they interviewed i'm sorry the people who were doing like the interviewing were twitter people right right and a couple outside people like me and a few others that's really cool though yeah and then um and then they they and and there were it was actually some really impressive candidates and like i was like i was kind of blown away by like how many smart people were thinking through how do you actually build a decentralized social media protocol.

49:54And then eventually they hired Jay and she set it up as an independent operation and then built out the company. And the originally had, so the board was herself, Jeremy Miller, who is still on the board and has a lot of experience in decentralized protocols and standards. And then Jack was the third board member. And in the midst of all of this as well, then Elon came along, obviously. I think your listeners know what happened. Might have heard of him. Yeah. He's the Zip2 founder, if you haven't. Yes. It's funny. If you go way back in the TechDread archives, I have a post about Zip2 where I called him elton musk at the time which i i've never corrected um and so uh uh so yeah jack was on the board but somewhere around this time when elon took over um jack discovered noster which is this other decentralized social media protocol and he became really really interested in it um and this is actually about the last time i spoke with jack um where he was like oh you should check out noster like it is everything that your paper um you know that your paper described and i was like okay that's interesting and i was like but what about blue sky like aren't you doing this guy on the board of that you're on the board and he's like yeah he's like they're they're too slow um noster is gonna move much faster okay buddy yeah how's how's noster doing yeah yeah So I checked it out.

51:45I actually do think there are some really cool things about Noster. Oh, I'm sure. And technically, it's a really interesting setup that he's right that it does enable a lot of really – some really cool things can be done via Noster. And it is interesting because both the technological underpinnings of both NOSTER and the ATT protocol, which is what Blue Sky is based on, both really come out of this other decentralized protocol called secure scuttlebutt, which we're not going to get into and what that is and what happened to it. So both of them take some of the technological thinkings from the same core idea.

52:26And that's actually kind of interesting. And if you get into the technical weeds, it's kind of neat how there are some similarities there. But he got really focused on it, mainly because it was so lightweight and so simple that people could build on it very quickly, whereas Blue Sky was taking more time. But part of the reason why Blue Sky was taking more time and part of the reason why I've always been really impressed by Jay is that her approach to all of this is like some people care about decentralization. Most people don't. And if you're going to build a thing that works, like the fact that it is a decentralized protocol underneath, it shouldn't matter to most users.

53:05They need to build just a good service upfront. That's the most important thing. And so Jay's very, very conscientious of that and thoughtful of that. And so anyway, so that all happened. Jack was still on the board. And then at some point, he was doing an interview and was sort of confronted about something. And he was like, oh, I'm quitting the board. And so he quit the board. And suddenly there was an empty seat on the Blue Sky board. And then, yes, lots of names were thrown out in big threads on Blue Sky of potential replacements. Very unfair. But, I mean, I had been in sort of regular contact with Jay, you know, ever since Blue Sky started.

53:55And there were different points where different things popped up. And she had reached out to me for thoughts and advice. And I'd had a few phone calls with her over the time. And so basically, I think she had reached out because she wanted some advice on something. And again, this is all totally informal. I had no official relationship or anything. And we started talking. And I tossed out the idea. I was like, I know Jack left. if you want me to help find you someone else, I am willing to like evaluate other people. But also like if you're interested in potentially having me be that person, I'm also interested in that.

54:36And so that's basically what I said. And we continue that conversation over the course of about two months. And I spoke to Jeremy, who's the other board member and some other folks as well. and then eventually you know they offered me that spot cool that's the basic story to wrap us up i will ask you the question i love to ask people which is why should we have hope right now because there's so much there's so much depression i'm not talking about politics i'm just talking about within the tech industry there's so much shit there's so much grim shit what gives you hope right now. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I mean, stuff like Blue Sky, and I will broaden that to say all of the attempts at building new decentralized systems, I find super exciting and encouraging because it's showing that we can build that world where it's like we can look at...

55:32you know, the, the, the, the success of social media as a concept is really interesting and it's cool. Like it has allowed so many people to connect and yes, there are all sorts of downsides. Like again, not denying what we know are the downsides of social media, but like the, the number of important friendships and, you know, business contacts and relationships that I've built through social media and this concept of people being able to communicate with each other so easily is such a powerful thing that I think a lot of people take for granted. And yes, what happened was that that all sort of got locked in these in shitified silos from these, you know, giant companies run by often terrible people and, you know, with very misguided incentives.

56:25The thing that I am really enthusiastic about with decentralized social media is that we have a chance to do it again, and we have a chance to hopefully do it better. And this is something that I didn't really talk about in my thinking on the paper. And this is something that comes up, and I think it is worth addressing, is that some people say, well, Blue Sky is a company. It is venture funded. It's got to go down that same route of incentivification. And that is a fear. And I sort of view part of my role on the board as being like stopping the injetification and sort of representing the best position of the community.

57:05But, you know, one other thing, again, another thing that has impressed me about Blue Sky and Jay is that they have within their mission this idea that the feature company is a potential adversary, right? Everybody knows what happened with Twitter. Right. And so they are building the protocol to be resistant to that. That doesn't mean it won't happen, but it is being done in a way that is much more difficult for them to inshittify. And again, like I go back to the email example where most people have a Gmail account. Like lots of people use Gmail. And some people can argue like Gmail is not great.

57:43but i don't think gmail has been as in shittified as other systems because the because it's built on email because it's built on basic email protocols smtp and and whatnot and so if they make it really horrible if they were really like there were concerns you know early on oh google's gonna spy on all your email and do advertising off of it and all this kind of stuff they you know they they sometimes make experiments in that way and then they get you know smacked down and stuff because as soon as they go down this path of really making it horrible it's so much you know it just opens up the opportunity for somebody to step in and say well it's easy like you can switch you don't lose contact with anyone right it's hard to leave facebook it's easy it's easier to leave gmail and so the incentive structure then is for google not to fuck up gmail That's not to say Gmail has its problems, but I think it's less in shitified than other services.

58:45Whereas, and BlueSky and the way they're designing BlueSky and AT protocol, it is designed to make it really difficult for future BlueSky to in shitify the service. Because if they do, all of the pieces are set up that somebody else can come in and create new BlueSky, GreenSky, whatever you want to call it. that everybody can just shift to with the push of a button and blue sky loses everything that they have as, as a company. And so the, the real challenge now is like, can we build, you know, a sustainable business and service on that without making it awful for the users and the community on that service.

59:27And, but we've built in this sort of commitment mechanism, which is if, if, you know we try and do things that is exploiting our users which is like that's where the incentivization curve starts you know you reach this point where instead of providing value we now have to extract yeah you've trapped them now they cannot be right and so you know with blue sky the whole point is like we're setting it up as you know not me them but you know i'm i'm on the board i'm watching they're setting it up in a way that they're setting you know a trap for themselves that says, if we try and start extracting value in a way that is awful to people, they can leave and they can destroy our business.

1:00:07And therefore, we can't do that. We have to build a service that is good for the community and that provides value for the community rather than is extracting value from the community. And so that, who knows if it'll work? A lot of this is theoretical, but I think everything that they've done so far has been in that right. They make mistakes. everybody makes mistakes but i think they're moving in the right direction with it and that has me really really optimistic because wouldn't it be great if we could have like all of these benefits that we're talking about without you know without the awfulness and without you know it all being dependent on some billionaire who's you know trying to buy up an island in hawaii or whatever okay so maybe i have one more question okay what is the mechanism to stop blue sky and shitifying then yeah i mean it's basically the fact that anyone can can every every part of blue sky itself can be recreated elsewhere while still allowing you to communicate with people on blue sky right so it is possible to entirely remove yourself from blue sky and still communicate with anyone else on blue sky huh and so that's how it should be yes right and so you know if blue sky and shitifies and does bad stuff, then somebody else is going to come along and say, I don't like this.

1:01:28So just for example, if they decide to start inserting terrible ads everywhere or whatever, then it's like somebody comes along and says, well, I'm going to build the infrastructure that is Blue Sky without the ads. And they would have access to all the posts, all the users. And Blue Sky can't do anything to stop that. That's really cool. That is a better future. but blue sky can keep users by not being shit exactly exactly and so you know there is a the challenge of like you know it still is a company it is a public benefit company so we are allowed as a board like uh you know the fiduciary duty is to the to a wider set of stakeholders including the community not just the investors and we can do that legally because of the public benefit corporation.

1:02:16But we have this technical infrastructure that says, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot if we make it shit for the community. And now the trick is, can you build a real sustainable business on top of that by actually providing value? And that's hopefully the next stage of what the company is working on. Mike, thank you so much for joining me. where can people find you? So, well, thanks for having me. This was a really fun conversation. I wasn't sure where it was going to go, but that was good. That's the better offline experience. And yeah, so I am obviously on Blue Sky. I'm mmasnick at mmasnick.bsky.social.

1:03:03That's my account there. It's easy to find me on Blue Sky. Obviously at TechDirt. And those are the main things. So if you want to read my articles, read them on Tech Dirt. If you want to see me, you know, ranting about this or that at any point, find me on Blue Sky. Thanks so much. And you will now get the soon-to-be-updated Better Offline links following this. Thank you for listening.

1:03:35Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Ossowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at matasowski.com, M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I.com. You can email me at ez at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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