@CristinaDeLisle some notes on your presentation version (ActivityPub for Administrations - HedgeDoc). I don’t want to edit your version, as they reflect your thoughts and preferred structure.
Feedback on slide 5 and 6
Slide 5 - Centralization
Ad-tech financed R&D → do you mean to say that corporate innovation was payed + determined by Ad-driven biz models?
The other way round is also a factor: Science-driven Ad-tech / UX design full of Deception Patterns (better term than ‘dark patterns’), i.e. expert psychologists, sociologists, behavioral scientists maximizing our engagement (addictive tech).
Can address in next slide under “Incentive to maximize engagement”
Web2.0 dream to nightmare → the situation is even more dire than referred in slide notes.
Tristan Harris: "An unraveling of the social fabric of society and civil wars" (click to expand)
In a 2018 discussion with Tristan, former ethicist at Google and co-founder of Center For Humane Technology (known from The Social Dilemma) he gave these most striking words as reason to their founding: “My biggest concern is an unraveling of the social fabric of society and civil wars.”
Later on, these quotes, also 2018:
“The pen of history is in technology’s hands, and is increasingly steering elections, conversation, beliefs about ourselves, the world, and our friends, children… towards catastrophe in each domain.”
“naming the problem - akin to “tech-accelerated social decay” - but the even more existential/destabilizing version of that arising from tech supremacy over the weaknesses in human mind.”
Slide 6 - Web 2.0 10 years later
Consider mention of “Walled gardens”, do everything to keep users on your platform.
Consider mention of “Severe Vendor Lock-In” where e.g. administrations start to obtain and build on top of platforms that seem initially cheap choices / low-hanging fruit (such as use in Education). Also Big Tech forces de-facto standards upon us, that most of all serve their own needs, e.g. Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Consider addressing the FOSS conundrum: Arguably open-source has eaten the world. Big Tech thrives on it, and has co-opted it. It’s used everywhere in their proprietary SaaS platforms, and they don’t give enough back. They rake in billions and FOSS developers are struggling to earn a living. Also: Big Tech is not innovative anymore, they are just buying out & absorbing innovative stuff.
Incentive to maximize engagement → Biggest issue here is that this provides little incentive to suppress misinformation and fake news, things that “appeal to the underbelly” / “bottom of the brain stem”, as these are huge drivers of clicks.