Kinja reply list

Read More
Lacey DonohueMichelle Dean
4/15/14 2:00pm
Do you think the internet itself should be "publicly owned"? One reason corporations have so much power, after all, is that well, they own a lot of servers.
Reply
- Read More
  astratLacey Donohue
  4/15/14 2:23pm
  I think we need a public option, especially at the level of infrastructure. Susan Crawford does a brilliant job of making this case and I recommend her work. The Internet should be treated as a utility, but that won't happen without a fight. What's crazy is how the cable cartel is lobbying/subverting municipalities that are trying to take this issue into their own hands and provide affordable fast broadband to their communities — like they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in one town along to scuttle such plans.
  Reply
- Read More
  Tom Scoccaastrat
  4/15/14 2:45pm
  Have there been any notable successes by municipalities overcoming that opposition?
  Reply
Read More
J.K. TrotterMichelle Dean
4/15/14 1:58pm

The overwhelming majority of what goes up on the site is composed under the glow of a large, prominently placed screen that keeps real-time tabs on the number of views, comments, and “uniques” (new visitors, who are even more valuable to than page views to advertisers), metrics that determine staff bonuses and advancement.

Is this arrangement significantly different than, say, how authors and publishers monitor a book’s ranking on Amazon.com, and make future decisions based on it? This isn’t to necessarily defend Gawker’s arrangement, or Amazon’s; it’s more a question about the situation’s uniqueness.

Also, the screens in Gawker’s office were recently upgraded to display a leaderboard of Top Kinja Users. So in addition to stories being ranked by the number of unique visitors they attract to Gawker Media properties, so are staffers themselves.
Reply
- Read More
  astratJ.K. Trotter
  4/15/14 2:34pm
  I think it's a bit different, in that when you are writing a book you can't really monitor for feedback. So the rankings you mention are after the fact, post-publication. But as I say in the book, this may change with the advent of e-reading, which sends back data on reader habits and progress, which may lead folks to rework narratives to keep folks from putting a title down. So the general tendency is one that will likely spread.
  
  The whole issue of giving people what they want is tricky, and it's one I write about at length in the book. Obviously, as a filmmaker and writer I want people to watch my movies and read my articles. But there's a point at which metrics can be distorting. And we all know how they can be gamed.
  
  There was a meeting where about a dozen doc commissioners a few years ago who told me no one wanted to watch movies about philosophy and what a terrible idea my movies were – their metrics told them so. So I don't know, I feel like sometimes you have to give people what they don't know they want and be fine with a small audience.
  Reply
Read More
Hamilton NolanMichelle Dean
4/15/14 1:51pm
Can you explain how your thoughts on the unequal structures of the internet fit in with the fact that the internet has radically lowered or destroyed the barriers to entry in many fields, like publishing?
Reply
- Read More
  astratHamilton Nolan
  4/15/14 2:12pm
  Barriers have lowered in that we can all post or comment, it's true. But there are still massive asymmetries of power and audience. I even make the case the gulf is expanding between the big and small, there's a "missing middle." As we all know, an an individual with a decent online following can't rival the big organization. Consider the big legacy news orbs, which arguably and counterintuitively have as much if not more influence than they had before. Here's a quote from the State of the News Media report: "Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience than they did in the legacy media."
  
  We have to keep our individual ability to participate online in perspective. Because sure regular people benefit from tech – we all do in lots of ways — but we don't benefit as much as platform owners who can collect the data generated by our communications.
  
  Also, factors like celebrity, advertising budgets, etc still dictate who gets attention in the online world.
  
  Lots of barriers still exist, they are just less visible.
  Reply
Read More
Adam WeinsteinMichelle Dean
4/15/14 1:58pm
Astra, thanks for joining us. I wonder if you can go into a little more theoretical depth: What the hell went wrong, really? In the past few decades, left thinkers like Donna Haraway and Hardt and Negri really seemed to anticipate the rise of new tech, and showed great faith in its potential to host cultural criticism and mass action. Was this radical potential just incorporated by the Voxdotcoms of the world, or was it off-base from the start? Did Marcuse and Adorno have our mollifying, self-perpetuating culture industry pegged, years before the web?
Reply
- Read More
  astratAdam Weinstein
  4/15/14 2:18pm
  I think you're on to something. There was a turn away from political economy in the realm of high theory. And that's unfortunate, and I say that as someone who obviously likes theory (high and low). As I point out in one of the book's footnotes, folks like Hardt and Negri actually sound like some popular corporate consultants/tech hypers when they talk about what they believe the inevitable impact of the free flow of information online will be. They don't recognize the way that the "free" (which actually means advertising supported) circulation of information online can still lead to a consolidation of wealth and power.
  
  So yeah, I think that Frankfurt School folks may have still something to teach us. Indeed, one reason I wrote this book was because I felt like decades of useful media criticism were being forgotten, when actually so many old problems have carried over to new media, which means the old critiques are still relevant. There is no real vocabulary for progressive critique of tech – we are all just using the tired Silicon Valley buzzwards. So that's why I spend a bunch of pages dissecting that rhetoric in the book.
  Reply
Read More
flamer1969Michelle Dean
4/15/14 2:54pm
Astra, you are right on about the structural origins of inequality on the internet. Utopians that thought the revolution would start the minute we got online were probably not to realistic about how slowly cultural changes happen.

Do you see any positive signs of cultural change brought about by the internet? I feel like people, even "low-information voters" are better informed than they used to be, and certainly more active in discussing their opinions. Could we be closer to a functional democracy than we have been in decades?
Reply
- Read More
  astratflamer1969
  4/15/14 3:24pm
  I agree there are positive signs, like all the ones people tend to point to in these discussions – for example, the ability of people who are part of marginalized communities to find each other (it was amazing to see networks of my disabled friends mobilizing online around Hurricane Sandy). But I think we really need to keep the underlying economic structural conditions in focus, because business incentives will shape how these tools evolve over the long term. The way the VC model works is that companies try to build a brand/attract users and worry about profitability later, but it's when the need for revenue kicks in hard that we need to worry. Another way to say this is that you may think the Google founders are cool dudes (and that is totally debatable/not my position) but the real issue is who runs the company after them.
  
  As for our democracy, there's forward and backward movement. As new tools for communication, distributed fundraising, and online campaign building coincide with demographic shifts that favor the democrats (and whatever other positive developments we can cheer), we can simultaneously count on more fighting dirty from the conservatives. We see this with attacks on voting rights, gerrymandering, and gutting limits on campaign finance. They are using every ugly tool in their arsenal to suppress democracy. Meanwhile the big tech companies who were underdogs a few years ago are getting into the lobbying game in a big way and spending big bucks, reinforcing politics as usual despite whatever we are doing online.
  Reply
- Read More
  flamer1969astrat
  4/16/14 4:38pm
  The underlying economic structural conditions are encoded deeply by our cultures. Materialistic ideas survive paradoxically on the internet due to culture, and this . The appeal of "owning" a song, for example, persists even though you could listen to that same song at any time you like on Youtube because it satisfies culturally implanted ideas of status and agency. Without those cultural throwbacks, there would be no money to be made, no advantage for corporate ideas on the internet. Lucky for us, cultural ideas can evolve and change.
  
  Over time, there is an inevitablility to the evolution of an open internet unfettered by capitalist ideas. Information cannot be owned, and attempts to treat it as if it could will eventually fail.
  Reply
Read More
sizor_sisterMichelle Dean
4/15/14 2:10pm
Mark Zuckerberg said on a Facebook post;

"Today, we're sharing some details of the work Facebook's Connectivity Lab is doing to build drones, satellites and lasers to deliver the Internet to everyone."

How do you feel about tech behemoths like Mark Zuckerberg rallying behind the idea of "Internet for everyone?" Do you think there is something greater than internet access at play?
Reply
- Read More
  astratsizor_sister
  4/15/14 2:47pm
  Definitely. They want to make sure those emerging markets belong to them, whether it's previously disconnect communities coming online or all of us entering virtual reality. Their motives are not altruistic, it's not just about Internet access as a favor to humanity.
  Reply
Read More
Taylor BermanMichelle Dean
4/15/14 2:12pm
When you say that a lot of internet critics have too much "corporate experience" to be really left-wing, what do you mean?
Reply
- Read More
  astratTaylor Berman
  4/15/14 2:44pm
  Sorry, that could be unclear. It's not that they have "too much corporate experience to be left wing"—that's not what I said—it's just a fact that they have business backgrounds and also aren't particularly left wing.
  
  I was just making an observation that the guys best known for being tech critics tend not to be academics, or activists, or philosophers, or programmers, or whatever, but all have a business background. This of course shapes their analysis, their references, their worldview. There are so many other perspectives out there that need to be part of the public conversation about technology.
  Reply
Read More
Tyler DerosierMichelle Dean
4/15/14 2:02pm
It seems that the internet is making people much more aware of the rampant inequality that exists around the world, hence the vision that things are more unequal because of it. While this may have a negative effect on a person's well-being, I feel this needs to occur in order to make needed changes. In my opinion, inequality always stems from a broken system and it's pretty obvious that we're living in a system that has outgrown its capacity to serve the majority.
Reply
- Read More
  ScottieBinyonsTyler Derosier
  4/15/14 2:09pm
  But what are they doing once they become more aware? "Likes" on Facebook, "stars" on Kinja, shared links raising awareness aren't really doing much of anything unless there is a real world action being taken. Too much focus goes into being "aware" with little to nothing on the action side. Changing a profile photo on Facebook for the awareness issue of du jour is fine, but without followup is hollow. I am not saying that positive things don't occur when people become aware of something they had no idea was occurring, but at the same time, how much of that "awareness" is merely done for the sake of "showing off" how conscious of issues people are?
  Reply
- Read More
  Tyler DerosierScottieBinyons
  4/15/14 2:20pm
  I totally agree with you on this. I'm guilty of it as well. I really do wonder though why more people aren't taking to the streets and protesting. What can we do to encourage a more effective way of action? I would hate to see it come to a collapse before a realization for action is needed.
  Reply
Read More
Sarah HedgecockMichelle Dean
4/15/14 1:54pm
What do you mean by "socially-provided media," or "public media" online? What would that look like?
Reply
- Read More
  astratSarah Hedgecock
  4/15/14 2:39pm
  I mean media created and distributed with the assistance of public money, instead of through an opaque and unaccountable and inefficient system of advertising or left entirely to the market. There are some things about the old public broadcasting model (like tariffs and content quotas) that I would not like to see applied online, that just don't make sense, but there could easily be things like news and journalism outlets or national cultural archives/libraries/informational exchanges that could be publicly financed. Why not? (I mean, I know why not, but that's a political question, which is a different issue.)
  
  What I find fascinating is how this issue is off the table, but we use these public good analogies (Google is a library, Flickr is an archive, Twitter is a town square) all the time. Those analogies are misleading.
  Reply
Read More
mattress_rodeoMichelle Dean
4/15/14 2:44pm
How would your analysis respond to the proliferation of mobile technology in the developing world, and the use of social networking to organize and communicate during periods of social/political unrest? Are these unintended goods?
Reply
- Read More
  astratmattress_rodeo
  4/15/14 3:03pm
  Interesting question. I think Zeynep Tufekci's recent piece "Is the Internet good or bad? Yes" is worth a read on this front.
  
  I would def say they were "unintended goods" as Facebook was not designed to be a protest tool. And that's not to discount the good. But the issue of social networking tools as protest enhancers is even more complicated, IMHO, in a US context than in places where free speech and assembly are more suppressed. At least that's how I feel after being very involved in Occupy and a social media driven campaign called the Rolling Jubilee. We need to work on moving social change beyond spectacle and to beyond the kind of attention metrics already discussed in this Q and A (like and followers and all that), which can be misleading indicators of progress.
  Reply
- Read More
  mattress_rodeoastrat
  4/15/14 4:01pm
  Thanks for the suggestion and the thoughtful response.
  Reply