[iDC] Re: A critique of sociable web media

[Michel Bauwens]

Thanks for the precision Trebor, and apologies for the misunderstanding.

I do not think that the business-owned platforms are amoral per se, though I
similarly prefer alternatives.

If we distinguish the sharing  part from the attention aggregation, we see
that the proprietary platforms have to play a double game.

The sharing takes place in a context of abundance and community, and hence,
they have to adopt 'dolphin strategies', an invitational game that keeps the
sharing happy and creates community switching costs. Paradoxically, it is
openness that creates such a conducive environment.

On the other hand, in the monetarized attention aggreagation, they are
competing for scarce attention, and thus behave as 'sharks' for market
search. This will push them to do things that may go against the interests
of the community.

So essentially, the community must make sure that its interests are heard
and respected, and support the dolphin strategies and oppose the shark-based
strategies. It's a field of tension or class struggle if you like, but one
that does not necessarily involve tit for tat revenue sharing, as this
undermines the field of sharing.

At the same time, we must support the continued construction of distributed
platforms that are also conducive to distributed ownership, and hence
difficult to control centrally and to 'enclose'.

Michel


On 1/1/70, Trebor Scholz <trebor at thing.net> wrote:
>
> Michel,
>
> >As I see it, we have sharing platforms, operating largely outside
> >a monetary circuit, and the attention being monetized in order to fund
> the
> >platform and make a profit.
>
> No, no- that's a misreading. I did not speak about the types of platforms
> that you are referring to but instead I explicitly talked about the--core
> sites of the sociable web--,
> those that attract most of the traffic online because of the
> "user-generated content." (I even named names.) "Peripheral" sites are much
> more balanced in their exchange value:
> the costs to run the thing and the profit gained are much more balanced. I
> wrote about that at length in response to Howard.
> I'm curious if you'd disagree also that the core sites of the web are
> amoral (Google, Yahoo, iTunes,...)
>
> Trebor
>
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