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Here’s my practical question — what’s the MVP version of this reputationally-fueled group idea. (My attempted and ultimately bad shorthand of the concept might be an even better way of asking the question.)

I’ve done some thinking around the hard problem of incentivizing pro-social behavior on social media platforms, and have reached a lot of the same fundamental conclusions. It has to be tangibly reputation based. So the trick will be to “gamify” (a dirty word, I know) the acquisition of reputational merit. That means it has to be worth money or (real) status or both. Preferably both. It’s frankly a universal embarrassment that, this deep into the Internet Age (or whatever we’re calling it), a person still has trouble getting rich and famous just by consistently being trustworthy. It’s the opposite! What have we even been doing?! That’s rhetorical, obviously.

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MVP I think is a headline replacer. Very basic reputation rules, very basic look up and replace table, and maybe it only works as a chrome extension at first. Then you grow groups around headlines and can maybe even automate some with chatgpt.

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have you thrown something like that together to test it? may be illuminating, and not a big lift.

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Contractualism for social media. Love it.

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Thank you, sir!

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I love this. All of this. I love it all.

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By the way we have a very similar last name, so Peter had some wise sons.

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Rise up out of anonymity, Son of Peter!

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It is indeed quite interesting. I'll sprout more considerations as I mull it over. But off my hat...

You'd make a great King of America, young fellow. I especially like the red and blue and white buffalo and that she is a cow. Besides, I think that you folks parting from the Crown was a huge mistake. Pity that done is a stone, but a chap can dream.

The structure of your proposal needs, after the many fascinating words, a diagram. Several diagrams, actually, so that the structure is clear. (A ==> B; B ==> C; follows that: A ≠≠> B) this kind of thing: on how the interaction of individuals and groups would work in the system. Since this system would be implemented through algorithms, it needs a graphic rendition of the processes involved.

(Here, get in reward for your efforts a random item from my bag of holding: the word algorithm, which appears like it should have rhythm in itself, has none. It is in fact what early Mediaeval scholars -- people at the court of the Norman kings of England, who all spoke exclusively French until after King John -- called the numeric system that we use today, 0 to 9, which is the Arabic system: Algorism originally, and originally capitalised... as it is the Latinization of the surname of an Uzbek mathematician of the 9th century, Al-Kwarizm, whose works were translated first in Spain and then in France, and since his mathematics used those numerals, those numerals took his name. Here you go)

You should define how the groups are formed. Referred to Substack, would a group be the readers of a newsletter?

After which, immediately to my mind come problems due to medium.

Substack is a platform for authors, and a subscription business model. The interest of the business model and of the authors is to be accessible and visible as much as possible, so as to increase subscribers. Anything that limits visibility of content, except for whatever may violate the TOS, goes against the workability of Substack as a business.

A form of reputation system exists on Reddit, with upvotes/downvotes, but only internal to subreddits. Reddit being mostly based on ads and perk plans, it promotes the subreddits with the most users. The attempt of redditors to steer the company away from decisions that damaged a large number of them amounted to nothing despite several blackouts. Any form of democratic management appears very hard to implement on for profit platforms that subsist on advertising.

A form of reputation system for editors also exists on Wikipedia, which is non profit. Of course it is not comparable to a community of people who produce discourse, but editors that mess up are policed by the community of editors, with several levels of recourse involving decisions taken by groups of editors of increasingly higher reputation.

Again, I think that this is only possible because Wikipedia was not created to make money.

I need more convincing on:

1) How to implement the structure of groups in a place like Substack. Who gets to be part of a group and how, on what basis. Who gets to vote up or down what -- as this is not a community of subreddits, and it is also a very loosely connected community, and also every author owns the Substack they write.

2) How to sell the idea to the company owning the platform.

3) How to convince the readers, and especially the authors, that this is a good idea -- since most tend to write for their own audience and when getting into fights with readers in comments have the power to do whatever they want with that -- the "reputation" incentive is against losing subscribers, also economically, yet a great number moderate the comments.

4) How does this deal with the problem of people who go around purposefully looking for content they disagree with in order to get it banned. This kind of people, who engage in the same behaviour not just on platforms on the internet, but in real life in offices and universities and other public spaces, setting up complaints to get real people kicked out of their jobs, their work removed from journals, etc, how do you make this kind of people agree to stand by the rules set by others? Anonymity works decently on the internet to prevent intimidation when upvoting/downvoting, but IRL anonymity is impossible and the fear of mobs reigns everywhere the final decision makers cave in to mobbing or support mobbing. I doubt that people would accept to do online what they refuse to do in the real world.

5) Should it work, how do you save interesting ideas that are outliers or uncomfortable from the gag orders of a conformist majority?

Later, I may have more, but this is already a lot.

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Responses in line, had to cut some as it hit length limits…

***It is indeed quite interesting… that done is a stone, but a chap can dream.***

Even though I didn’t choose to have fifty stars line up to prophesy the place of my birth, I accepted the responsibility to force people to be free when I lifted the Shield of Speech. My hand held the Yew branch that Knighted the states and I have a duty to my people.

***The structure of… implemented through algorithms, it needs a graphic rendition of the processes involved.***

I can make these, but ultimately this is too complicated for simple diagrams. We had to do a lot of stuff in real life to make civilization workable. I didn’t even talk about the interactions between individuals and groups. Or about branches of government beyond just group formation. I think this is a forever project, the same way that law is in real life.

***(Here, get in reward… here you go)***

Deeply enjoyed this. I hadn’t been familiar with the etymology.

***You should define how the groups are formed. Referred to Substack, would a group be the readers of a newsletter?***

My guess is that this would be a good thing to offer people to start. At the beginning, you’d throw yourself into one community. Blocked and Reported has a really strong commenter section and would probably be a really good community. Similar with other groups like Slatestar Codex.

***After which, immediately to my mind come problems due to medium…. of Substack as a business.***

This is indeed a problem, which is why I anticipate they won’t do it unless the idea itself becomes widely popular. That’s the reason for my substack and why I show up to fight about this in random comment threads. People should want something better for themselves than to live under the dictates of an all powerful arbiter. If I can build a large base of support that’s sort of proof of concept that users will want it. Consent of the governed, etc. Also, I chat with several substack guys on Notes including Chris so I know they’re warm to the idea. But if I were him, making a purely business decision, I would hold off on it until I saw my community wanted to do it.

***A form of reputation system exists on Reddit.***

I think about this a lot. Reddit’s reputation, ultimately, is about interest. “I liked seeing this” or “I didn’t like seeing this.” That’s what the upvote really intrinsically represents. The reputation system I want is based on mutual intelligibility. If I can convince multiple people multiple times that my way of thinking is correct, that drives up the value of producing coherence.

***A form of reputation system for… was not created to make money.***

I believe their system is based on seniority, not review. I thought about this one, too. I also think the specifics matter here a lot, like do I know who I’m reviewing when I’m reviewing them? The acid test is that I can walk into any situation without resting on my name and convince someone that I am right.

***I need more convincing on:***

I’m here for it.

***1) How to implement the structure of groups in a place like Substack. Who gets to be part of a group and how, on what basis. Who gets to vote up or down what -- as this is not a community of subreddits, and it is also a very loosely connected community, and also every author owns the Substack they write.***

Initially, I would do this based on publications with audiences beyond say 100 subscribers. Anyone could do it but that’s where I would put the nudge to start getting community involvement. As for who gets to participate, I think there has to be something like I mentioned above where if you can’t produce content that can pass adjudications within your peer group you don’t get to actively participate anymore. You’ve basically self-selected that you’re not mutually coherent with the group. There’s got to be levels to that, though. People can support ideas they’re bad at articulating. That’s most people. They still should be able to vote on if they like it unless their voting is so inconsistent with the group that they should really be part of a different group. I don’t see that as bad either. People should get to feel like they belong to a community of people who think like them.

***2) How to sell the idea to the company owning the platform.***

I already bug Chris a lot on Notes. Feel free to put a word of support in for me. My goal with this substack is as a proof of concept. If I can get popular enough that is his signal that there is buy-in from the community to build features like this.

***3) How to convince the readers, and especially the authors, that this is a good idea -- since most tend to write for their own audience and when getting into fights with readers in comments have the power to do whatever they want with that -- the "reputation" incentive is against losing subscribers, also economically, yet a great number moderate the comments.***

In the future state of my system, there is no exit. You can Community Note across the entire internet and have it displayed for you. It’s social media agnostic. I want substack to charge to be part of a community, like taxes almost, so that money can be divvied up in the group based on reputation. It also gives them a revenue stream that isn’t just subscribers to writers and is an investment in substack itself. I also think as a writer it’s kind of hard to say “No, I am against Democracy.”

***4) How does this deal with the problem of people who go around purposefully looking for content they disagree with in order to get it banned. This kind of people, who engage in the same behaviour not just on platforms on the internet, but in real life in offices and universities and other public spaces, setting up complaints to get real people kicked out of their jobs, their work removed from journals, etc, how do you make this kind of people agree to stand by the rules set by others? Anonymity works decently on the internet to prevent intimidation when upvoting/downvoting, but IRL anonymity is impossible and the fear of mobs reigns everywhere the final decision makers cave in to mobbing or support mobbing. I doubt that people would accept to do online what they refuse to do in the real world.***

This would work by enforcing rules that you must have consensus across groups before you can remove something. The sort of natural flow of this kind of organizing scheme is that if you start to do stuff like that, you’ll ruin your reputation. The way this should work in even the short-term is that if your reputation is trash and you’re trying to dispute something from someone with a higher reputation that you just can’t. You’re locked out of the function.

I do think it’s also important to be able to flag accounts with something like “this person is a mob member” and put them on a global block list. They can still say what they want to say, but again, they can’t say it in your living room. You don’t see it, and aren’t notified of it, unless you go and look for it. That’s a different game.

***5) Should it work, how do you save interesting ideas that are outliers or uncomfortable from the gag orders of a conformist majority?***

Cassandra rules. If you say something that is true, and was adjudicated, especially multiple times, as false, but later is true you get outsized reputation. So say if someone had said it was true at the start, you’d get X number of reputation points. If it was failed, every time it fails, there’s a 10x multiplier if it gets overturned in your favor. So even if it’s flipping back and forth, you have ways to flag that and meaningfully identify it.

***Later, I may have more, but this is already a lot.***

Please feel free. Can’t be the King of America by myself.

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Sorry for having suddenly dropped off, my life is in a bit of a shambles right at this moment. Hope to be back.

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Not to worry in my account! I hope things get out of the shambles quickly and are otherwise going as well as they can be given the circumstance.

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