A short thought on dis-intermediation of Social Media

I read in email that @Vihartvihart will be working for Microsoft Research. Gone are the days when one could just email back some thoughts… so I’ll post them and maybe tweet this towards Her-Not-Emacs-ness.

> We have a few problems on our mind, like how to explain machine learning
> to people in a way that helps them make decisions about their own digital
> lives, and alternative models for social media that don't rely on preying
> on people's information while serving ads in return, and VR/AR
> interfaces, and generally things that bring power and dignity to the
> human experience now that the human experience is swamped with
> computerbits. But we're just starting, so we're not sure which of these
> we'll be diving into how much, or how.

I think that the most interesting part of being able to divorce social media from directly serving ads is that it means, I think, that the news feed algorithms no longer need to remain opaque.

That means that the machine learning algorithms behing the news feed can:

  1. be tunable by the person whose feed it is.

  2. be outsourced to a variety of competitive providers. This means some evolution by voting with your “wallet”. Innovation without having to be part of facebook.

  3. Ads and sponsored material aren’t so bad, if it’s for things you are in the market for!

I want to expand upon (3) directly, because it happened to me this past week.

I just bought a 3TB HD from newegg.ca. Now their ads are chasing me around the Internet (comics.com is really bad) trying to sell me HDs. But… I BOUGHT ONE already. While I was still trying to figure things out some ads might have even been appreciated, if they had some real content.

(Do I want Western Digital NASware? Green? Black? Blue? Red? Do I still think Seagate makes mediocre drives, but has the best return policy? I’d sure like some machine learning to bring relevant discussions, comparisons and even sponsored white papers and press releases to my attention… until I’ve decided!)

Now I want a juicer… I’d be happy to tell my ML news feed sorter for awhile.

Actually, I am buying a total of 4 3TB drives over the next weeks, but because I’d like them not to sequential serial numbers from the same production run, I’m buying them one at a time from different sellers. “Free”-shipping means this won’t cost me more, although it does have an environmental impact.