The Anti-SNARF Manifesto

The main reason for the harm today’s internet platforms cause is the misalignment in incentives between users, creators & the platforms — or demand, supply and platform incentives. And a lot of it comes down to advertising-based business models.

5. Algorithmic feeds are failing: StumbleUpon helped me start to understand, almost at a humanistic level, how vast the internet could be. TikTok often yields a similar result, though with a key difference. On TikTok, almost all videos trend toward a kind of visual consistency and repeatability. Silly voices or bits of speech become ‘sounds’, to be... See more

The above problems with social media in turn generate massive costs for platforms, in the form of gigantic moderation teams made of tens of thousands of people, severe damage to platforms’ brands, and openings for competition to find more efficient means for distributing content. And no platform has been better at exploiting the weaknesses of socia... See more