Tomorrow, Today - Community, Online Communities & Social Media with Dr. Amy Bruckman

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

In this episode, we discuss the concept of community-- what is community, how do we define it, how do online communities fit into this space, and what does the future hold for the idea of community? The question of community also offers some interesting insights into the idea of citizen science and decentralized sources of knowledge, such as wikipedia. What are the larger implications of this model for content sourcing, and how does it compare to individual specialists? Dr. Amy S. Bruckman is Regents' Professor and Senior Associate Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology where she studies online communities. Bruckman received her Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab in 1997. She is a Fellow of The ACM and a member of the SIGCHI Academy. She founded her first online community in 1993, and has been teaching the class 'Design of Online Communities' at Georgia Tech since 1998. Her Book, "Should you Believe Wikipedia? Online Communities & the Construction of Knowledge" can be found anywhere you buy books, and she can be found moderating R/Science & on Twitter at @ASBruckman.

Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome back to tomorrow today. I'm your host, Andy, and I'm always joined by my good, adoring co-host. Illustrious co-host. With many descriptors. Yes, I love myself an adjective. Many. So today we're going to talk about Nash's favorite place, the Internet. The Internet.

The Internet of Things. So specifically, what we're looking to talk about today is online communities. and the idea of what community is and what the future of communities looks like. I hope it's more online. Can we get more online? If we're any more online, I don't have anything to say back to that because that's just frightening. Download me into Twitter.com and let me fight Elon Musk. Grab that Elon tells us. That sounds like something else that maybe the internet would do.

Not that. Pass on that. No. So today we are interviewing Dr. Amy Bruckman, a professor, at the Georgia Institute of Technology, affiliated with the School of Interactive Computing and the GVU Center. She is best known for her pioneering research in the fields of online communities and the learning sciences. The entire crux of this interview is based on her book, which is called Should You Believe Wikipedia, online communities, and the construction of knowledge. So, Nash, tell me, should we believe Wikipedia? Okay. I actually love talking about Wikipedia. I'm partially an academic, a terrible one. Is it because you want to have a Wikipedia article?

First of all, I am on Wikipedia. Thank you very much. I have many, many sections. A lot of them are about my Twitter beefs with other people. Wait, is that true? No. You believed it, though. You were like, oh, shit.

I got real excited. No, I have not made it there yet. I am on IMDB, but not on Wikipedia for whatever reason. Shameless plug. Yes. Google me. It's helpful for my cred. But I actually love talking about this because I feel like in academia,

there's this big movement against using Wikipedia as a source. Nobody wants to see you be like, I went to Wikipedia and look about how a historical event happened. The thing about Wikipedia is that they really strive to be factually accurate and all of their sources are cited at the bottom. So if you go there as a first consult, I think that's fine. I think we should let Wikipedia have its realm in academia. That's my Wikipedia rant. That's it right there. Okay.

So I would recommend reading this book. Okay. Because she talks all about it. She's like, don't use it. No, actually, I guess since we're going to be talking about it, based on the data that exists, Wikipedia is actually statistically more accurate than historians writing on subject matter. Oh, shit.

Yeah. I mean, I would see that for journalists writing history, but not necessarily historians. And now I feel better and worse. Called out. Better and worse. I did say use it. As a historian, I have been called out.

Yeah, so basically, there's two components to this book and how this conversation goes forward. It starts with a conversation about what does community look like, which I do want to talk about. And then we talk about this idea of like open source citizen science and this idea that people, individuals, while individually may know less about certain subject matters, given a very narrow research area, they can actually be statistically better than specialists. And it wasn't just Wikipedia that they proved this on. There was a project that was basically on doing documentation on stars and what was going on in the galaxy.

And it was an open source inviting the general public, not like people that are super into this stuff or anything. And statistically, the population of just general citizens, when it was cross-checked against people that are astronomers, they actually had a slightly higher percentage of accuracy. Hell yeah. So it's really interesting and highlights the importance of decentralization. And all of that plays back into this idea of what is a community. because a community by definition is a decentralized organization of individuals within that community

who can then use their very narrow scope to help build something that's much larger than itself. Right. So this is like crowd think, but sort of the opposite direction. Yeah, we think about like a bee itself is really not smart, but collectively a hive is very intelligent in the sense that it can self-regulate and things like that. And all this plays into this general bigger concept that we talked about a little bit of, complex system science, which is just basically the idea that a whole is more than the sum of its parts, that the diversity itself adds value that individually those parts when taking taken separately don't have. And I think that's really important and kind of helps frame up a

really interesting conversation on what we might think of as community and how we define community. Because I think traditionally we do think of community as being this thing that's very physical. your neighbor that lends you a cup of sugar or whatever it might be. Now, when we're talking about online communities, those things can fill kind of a different role. And I think as somebody who is an internet persona like yourself, unlike me who is never on the internet. Never on the internet. Never. Don't know what it is. Not a meme creator.

No. It offers an opportunity to find ways to connect with people in a different way. But does that still constitute community? I think that's an excellent question. And what I think about it and what comes to mind most is, you know, we have, we have these digital communities that are often united to serve a purpose or to connect a group of people whom otherwise, you know, physicality is a limitation. So what immediately comes to mind is the gay community. Obviously, it exists in real life. But especially for, you know, LGBTQIA people living in a rural area or who have parents that are not necessarily very supportive of a lifestyle, I think the internet has provided a community for those people to get access to. other people like them. And I think that there has been a lot of that movement in feeling recognized and supported and loved, I think, in a sense, when you weren't getting that from your physical

community. And that's something I also can attest to in the sense of as a niche market type farmer, yes, niche market farmer is like the new niche internet microcelebrity. Yeah, it basically is. I don't want to say I'm a big deal, but like I'm a very big fish. And by big, big fish, I mean like a sardine in a small pond. And by small pond, I mean like a puddle. But, but that said, the commonality, the specialization that can exist because of those communities that it can only exist online because of, you know, is really important. And one of the things that Dr. Bruckman brings up in her book and a bit in our conversation is that these communities actually exist while they might come around the sky. commonality. They often, in her example, is that she was part of a mini cooper group because she liked mini-Coopers. And when something in her personal life had happened, it was a group that she could reach out to in the middle of the night and like kind of vent about these things that she didn't really feel comfortable doing with, you know, her friends in real life or her neighbors and these types of relationships that are meaningful and important, but don't maybe in the modern era really

fit that like that problem and like you can just drop a question in a form and you're not waking someone up from sleep right like your friend might be or you know dropping it and they wake up in the morning and it's seven in the morning and right they don't know if you're up so they don't know to respond that that that third space is very different and that's something that she explores a bit in the book this concept of a third space that's not home it's not work it's someplace else and how do we how do we define it what does it look like and what are some of the the primary characteristics of it and does the internet match that? Does the internet discord group or forum or whatever, does that match what we think of as a community? Sure. I mean, I do think, to your point,

that there is a safety and a validity in being a participant in those communities which value the same things that you value, especially if the people in your life don't. And also to your point, there is, you know, the internet is always awake. You know, it's an international community of people, especially if you've got a big enough community that somebody's always around. And if you feel safe and valid in voicing your opinions or talking about things that are personal to you in those communities, basically somebody's always there to back you up. Yeah. And I think the point is that we have a very strict understanding of what community looks like in our head.

And the reality is that community has like these really fuzzy boundaries of what constitutes a community. And that all communities don't necessarily have to fill the same roles in the sense of, well, when I think of, community. I think of a bar because I go to a bar and, you know, I'm there at four o'clock because the sports game is on and all the people there are also fans of that sport. And because it's in this town, that means all the people at the bar are also from this town. And based on how much the drinks cost, you can kind of figure out what the income group that the people that are there are in. And if they're around at two o'clock in the afternoon, that might speak about what kind of work they do. So you can whittle it down in a very meaningful way that you can't. You can't. You can

can't on the internet. However, that also creates other problems. Right. So is, is the definition of community here is, does the internet present a linguistic problem for the term community? Is that what we're sort of exploring? Yeah. In the same way, I think you might think of the word like racist as being like oversimplification of an issue. Like there's a very large difference between someone that's in the KKK and somebody who's like, you know, meets the internet definition of racist. There's a wide scope between wanting to actually kill people because of their skin color and just being like, they make me uncomfortable. Right? They're not the same thing? They're not the same thing. Okay. And the word racist covers both of those and they're not the same thing.

That doesn't mean either of them is good, but like it also means they're not the same thing. So the point is that community has the same issue that encapsulates a lot. There needs to be more terms and I don't know if the world needs more words given the TikTok generation. Sorry, I'm old. I've offended half of our audience probably. But the point is that it's complicated. And while the term community is really helpful in starting these conversations, it's a lot more complicated. And we need to talk about this concept of online communities with more nuanced than it's in either or situation. Online communities aren't necessarily bad or I mean, I guess some people would say they are necessarily good. But she also covers that in the book a bit about like how you can watch a YouTube video and you go

down this rabbit hole into thinking chem trails are real. Right. People that also believe in chem trails also believe all these other things. So you just kind of pigeonhole yourself and then you get in this echo chamber. And echo chambers can be good sometimes, especially when you're dealing with very specialized knowledge. but they can also be really damaging when you start thinking that lizard people run the world. Cough.

QAnon. Cough. Yeah, we're almost on like R and on at this point. Like, they've gotten so off the rails. I'd like to present a new theory that the KFC guy, Colonel What's His Face? He's actually at the helm of the world. I'm pretty sure that's called Colonel Slanders. That's what happens when he serves papers to you for saying this on air.

Sorry, this show's over now. We're about to get shut down. Good. You know what? Colonel Slandered. I'm going to get that cease and desist letter tattooed on my back. It's going to be amazing. They're going to tattoo it in like chicken fat. No, no.

That's blood, my friend. They tattoo that shit in blood. Yeah. So the point is that we have a really interesting analysis of what community looks like at the pros and cons of the online community. And then ultimately, what does this look like moving forward? Because, you know, we haven't even talked about in all of this conversation that we've had. Is Facebook good or bad?

Bad. Okay. And why are things like Facebook good and bad? Like, is it bad because you're tired of your uncle's racist rants, or is it because Zuck is watching me on my... Zuck is watching you. On my camera. I think it could be a little bit of both.

I mean, I do think that the Facebook example is generational, right? Like... Do you feel that same anger towards Instagram? To a lesser extent. I mean, I have... Despite it being still Zuck. Sure, sure. I mean, I have problems with mainstream.

social media anyway because of how much it infringes on our personal rights. But at the same time, like, that is where those communities exist, like, Tumblr and Twitter and Instagram. Like, those are... You are the only person that still talks about Tumblr, just for the record. I mean, I do think the Tumblr's gone downhill a lot lately, but... Lately. In the last several years.

It is important, though. It's technically a online community. I will give you that. Thank you. And where my dead journal people at? Everyone raise your hands, the five. of you that are still on Dead Journal. Are you?

No, I'm not. My old Dead Journal is still up, but I am not. Wait, is it actually Dead Journal, or are you talking about Live Journal? I only had a Dead Journal. Obviously, I only had a dead journal. I didn't know that was actually a real thing. Oh, of course it was. The Live Journal was, the Live Journal was, they called it Dead Journal because, like,

no one used it anymore. No, no, no, no. Like, I thought it was a pun. No. The Internet is not that smart, no. Dead Journal was for the sad people. Like, if you had depression, you had a dead journal, and you learned how to code to make it darker. If you had a live journal. But is it still the live journal website? No, no, no, no, no,

two different websites. Okay. Yeah, no. I'm getting an education on what year are we talking about? 2006. Oh, good. Actually, probably before that, really. Oh, yeah. So I'm hip is the point. You should definitely be listening to my opinions on online communities is really where we're going here. So when we talk about these things like Facebook and Instagram, like what are the reasons why it's a problem. Well, I mean, I think we sort of hinted at it already that you can get stuck down these rabbit holes that only take you further down rabbit holes. Yeah, and why does it do that, though? Well, I mean, that's our group think problem. This is starting to feel like a quiz. I'm like getting sweaty. Get that sweat on. No, I'm not saying you're wrong, but... But you're

saying I'm wrong. No, that's fine. No, you know, one of the things that's really important, and we should, you know, as we're recording this, quarterly earnings just came out for Facebook. What a nerdy thing to have looked at. Is it? You don't watch the news? So anyways, I don't know what to say to that. You've totally decimated my ability. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The Facebook quarterly report just came out. Yes, so the Facebook quarterly report came out.

And the reason why I'm bringing that up is because of the fact that that is their intent. Their goal isn't to create online communities. Their goal is to create profit. And how do you create profit? It's by making people look at things that they want to look at or making people engage in binary conversations. because that's what drives more clicks. That's what drives more ad revenue. So inherently, the model, the for-profit model of public community is fundamentally flawed

because the investors vested interests are in direct competition with what community is supposed to look like. Right. So your friendships are being commodified, essentially. Basically, and also turned against you to drive debate or argument or shit posting or whatever. Like they all kind of fall under the same category of how do I engage with people as much as physically possible? And the way to get people to engage is to piss them off.

Fantastic. So, so yeah, the future of the internet could go in many different ways. And we'll talk a little bit about that. But Nash, tell me your favorite thing about the internet. Oh, my favorite thing? That's really hard. We're going to try to be positive here. Yeah, we're going to try to be positive. Okay.

I have made some great friends on the internet, actually. That's true. And my career started on the internet. That's still true. You were an internet microcelebrity? I don't even think I count as a microcelebrity. I am a comedian, though. A nano celebrity?

A nano-seb? I think we need to get smaller than that. Like, think... I don't know what's... It's like a quark? A quirk celebrity? I can't even say that. What's your favorite part of the internet?

Memes? It's a hard question. No, I actually don't really like memes. That seems antithetical to your brand. I know. I'm not a huge meme person. know. It's shocking. I like stuff that's been put on the internet that's not from the internet. So like digging up old papers and nerdy stuff like that. Wow, you made the internet nerdier.

There's a niche for, there's a community for it. There's a community for that. All right. So hopefully you guys enjoy this episode. It's really fun. If you want to check out the book, which I highly recommend because we barely covered the surface of what's in the book. Should you believe Wikipedia? Nash says yes. online communities and the construction of knowledge, you can find it anywhere you get books. And for no further ado, Dr. Amy Bruckman. That's a real title of the book. My name is literally inside of it.

It is. It's back in Canada, though. Dr. Bruckman, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your work. Hey, it's great to be here, Andy. My name is Amy Bruckman, and I'm a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. and I study online communities. Awesome.

So it's funny to hear somebody, I mean, in a way you think of online communities in this idea of like a very psychological, sociological area and you study computing. So it's an interesting meshing, I think, of things that folks wouldn't initially think of as having a lot of common ground. So how did you get into this before we get going? Well, you know, I did my PhD at the MIT Media Lab. It was a crazy, wonderful time to be at the lab in its early years. And my dissertation project was a text-based virtual world for kids, which included a new programming language designed to make it easier for kids to learn object-oriented programming, but in a virtual world.

So you could make something like a pet that follows you around. And if you want to make something which tells jokes, you make something which inherits. from generic joke-telling object. So kids made things like an elephant that tells elephant jokes. And I think for a lot of years, I did research on both the internet aspects

and the educational aspects. And over time, I've come to focus more just on the internet part. There's so much going on on the internet. And it's just endlessly fascinating. Yeah, and you wrote a book about it. Could you tell us a little bit, the title of the book, and just kind of a quick summary so we can dive in? Yeah, my book is called Should You Believe?

Wikipedia, online communities, and the construction of knowledge. And it's basically everything I teach in my design of online communities class at Georgia Tech. So one of the key things that you focus on in the book is this idea of third spaces. And that's, you know, this place that's not home, it's not work. It's kind of a common ground for people to exist with some kind of like common thread that pairs them together into that one space. Traditionally, that's been like bars or, you know, it's like you go and you to watch the Red Sox or whatever, and there's a whole bunch of people that are there at 4 o'clock because that's the time the Red Sox are playing, or whatever it might be, and there's this common threat. Could you talk a little bit further about these third spaces and kind of their significance?

Everyone needs community. Everyone needs friends to support them. And your workmates are important, your schoolmates are important, and your immediate family are important. But there's a role played by those people who are not work and not home. And the interesting thing about internet communities is that you can find community with people who share values and interests with you. So I'm a moderator on our science on Reddit, which is the world's largest science discussion forum. And to be totally honest, I spend more time hanging out with the other moderators than I do.

actually modding. But I like them. They're science-oriented people. They're funny. They're smart. It's where I've found people I enjoy spending time with. The nice thing about Internet communities is everyone can find the group that really is right for them. Yeah. Yeah. I totally understand that I think about myself and I'm my day job. Well, I'm an accountant, but I'm also a farmer. The farmer doesn't pay the bills because, you know, farming. but it's something that I'm very specialized in what I deal with in terms of the animals and the way I manage the landscape. And if I were to look locally, there wouldn't be a large local community in support of what I'm doing or that would even understand what I'm trying to do. But because of the internet, you can on Facebook or Instagram or whatever find a community of people that are also interested in this very esoteric understanding of landscape management.

that otherwise you'd feel like you're alone out in the world. And I think that's where the internet can be really valuable for people. So I think the question really arises, though. And the book does a really great job of kind of dancing this line around how do online communities really fit into these third spaces, given the limitations of what they offer in the sense that this is somebody online. You are not meeting them face to face. There is a less personal component of it because of the interface, like inherent. limits the overlaps that you might have. Like, you know, like I said, okay, everyone's a fan of the Red Sox. You go into a bar. That still is underscored by the fact that means you live in the

same community. You're probably in the same income bracket because you're going to the same bar where beers might be $3 versus $5. And what the aesthetics of the bar are, obviously will infer certain type of clientele. So there's a lot of commonalities that are baked into that physical space that don't exist on social media, at least as much. So could you, Could you speak a little bit about what these online communities do offer and some of their limitations? You know, first of all, it's important to remember that a lot of online interaction is not purely online. People who meet each other on Twitch can go to TwitchCon and meet face to face and form really strong friendships, just as an example. The sites like Meetup are explicitly focused on helping people to meet up in person.

So a surprising amount of the time people really do meet face to face. That said, I don't think you can dismiss online-only interaction as not being powerful. You really can meet people who you have meaningful relationships with, even if you don't see them in person. Now, there are other limitations of these communities that are complicated. You know, these groups bring together people with shared values and assumptions about the world. And usually that's good. And every once in a while, it brings together a group of people who have shared beliefs that are not consistent with mainstream science that are false, that are wrong.

So the problem comes in when you have people, for example, who believe the earth is flat, who all reinforce one another's belief in a flat earth. Or my student, Zhael and I did a study of people who believe. in chem trails. Chemtrails is the theory that the visible condensation trails behind airplanes are deliberately sprayed for evil purposes. And people who think that we had a really fascinating time studying believers in chem trails. And what we found is that a lot of them are people who think something is wrong with the world and there must be a reason why there's something wrong. and they land on this one thing.

Ah, evil chemicals are being sprayed on us as their explanation for what's wrong. Now, what's interesting is people in the Kemptrails groups come to become real friends and support one another. And it is a supportive community, but they're also just wrong about the world. And that's a problem. And I think one of the things that I've seen in some of these groups, and you see it, you know, the term you use in the book is Echo Chambers, where you see, a feedback loop kind of start forming where, okay, you go into this believing chemtrails are this dangerous thing. And then, well, all the other people in this group also believe these

other things. And it just kind of builds and manifests into this much larger thing. And, you know, you could look at like the QAnon explosion over the last few years as a really good example of how these things kind of all come together and metastasize as one thing that exists and kind of, is self-reinforcing and everything somehow fits into this weird narrative that's an alternative world. And that can be really damaging. Absolutely, it can be. Now, echo chambers are not always damaging. Here's a favorite example. Back in the bad old days of Usenet, Usenet was kind of like Reddit, except from the 1980s. There were two groups about feminism, one moderated, soch dot feminism, and one unmoderated, alt dot feminism.

And you can imagine in your mind for a second what you think those two groups were like. In the moderated group, there was a statement of feminist values, and anyone who wanted to participate in the group had to accept certain basic things like people should be treated equally and paid equally. And then building on those assumptions, we could have a serious conversation about what the implications of feminist ideas are. All that feminism was unmoderated, and on the unmoderated group, it was just a flame fest. And a lot of misogynist hate speech and a lot of arguments about very basic things about

equality of people based on gender, that you could relitigate over and over and over until your face turned blue. You couldn't have a real conversation on the unmoderated group. It was just awful. So if you have a moderated group, a group that shares values, a group that is in an echo chamber, but it's an echo chamber based on values that are real. That's okay. The problem is when it's an echo chamber based on values that are wrong, like belief in Q&N or Chemtrip. Yeah. Yeah, and this, I think, points to something I'll ask you about a little bit later, how this is something that is

very much a product. I mean, it's always existed, but given the world we live in today, it's very much a product of our time because of propaganda, post-truth, and all these other things, which I want ask about a little bit later, so I'm going to put that off to the side for a moment. So one of the things you talked about early on in the book, and what got me, you know, I'd, I'd reached out to you because I'd seen one of the chapter titles on Researchgate, and I'd reached out because I couldn't find the chapter title, and you're like, no, this is a part of my whole book, so I had to go find the book. And initially, I was just going to read that chapter. I started reading the beginning, and it got into this idea of collaborative spaces and decentralized

models of data collection, which then I had to read the whole thing, because that's like, up my alley. You talk extensively about this idea of like this innate part of our humanness that's interested in being part of meaningful communities, whether that's digital or otherwise. And when you were collecting data for this book, you found all these different projects around like citizen science, which is this general idea that people can go out and do science and sometimes better than scientists because of just human fallibility. And that was just like really inspiring and insight. insightful. And I was curious when you got into this, was that one of the expectations you were going to see that this idea of like decentralized models can be really, really successful and sometimes better than relying on specialists? It's really funny that you say that, Andy, because that was the one thing I was absolutely sure of when I started.

My degree, my PhD is from the Epistemology and Learning Group, now called the Lifelong Kindergarten Group, directed by Mitchell Resnick at the MIT Media Lab. Mitchell's dissertation was about decentralized thinking and the ways that you could use a parallel computing language called Star Logo to promote decentralized thinking. He's also the creator of Lego Mindstorms and Scratch. And the idea that people can collaborate on something meaningful is core to the intellectual discipline of educational technology, constructionist educational technology that I was trained in. Citizen science is just wonderful to see the ways that people can contribute to real meaningful things in their spare time for fun, and it actually matters. It actually makes a difference.

So that was the one thing I wasn't surprised about, because that's kind of how I got into this in the first place, was a passion for the ways that people working together can create something that's greater than the sum of the parts. I also host another podcast, and basically the crux of that entire podcast is on complex system science and applying it outside of the, the quote-unquote natural world and how people should organize. So that's why when I was reading this, I was like, oh, my God, like it's someone from the other side, like the tech side that's coming to the same conclusion. And it's just like really insightful and I think speaks to what we're seeing with a lot of people that we're missing that connection because decentralized models of. of existence demand that we interface with people in some capacity as equals. These types of projects do that in a really meaningful and beneficial way.

Now, in that vein, there's this other issue, and I think sometimes the citizen science piece fits into it of how these new third spaces, as you call them, like the online community, kind of comes, and I think you've talked about this a little bit when you're talking about like the events, that there's still this sense from most people that lament the loss of community in the very physical sense. While I can go on Facebook and find people that agree with me on, you know, silvo pasture, you know, like how to forest farm, that's not going to be, that's not going to be the person that's going to, like, lend me a cup of sugar because that person doesn't live next to me.

And there's, like, this very literal sense of community that I think across generations, people agree doesn't really exist anymore. I'm curious about if you think that this online platform or these online platforms will have a place to fill in that role as they continue to grow and become something that's, I guess, completely saturated the market. Like, I think while a lot of older folks do use Facebook and things like that, I mean, my own parents don't and they're not, they're in their 60s, they're not that old. So, like, it's clearly not universally accepted the way I think it will be in the future. So is that something you see in the future being like addressing these kind of communal issues that are very like physically location oriented? I think the future of the internet is not set in stone. And what I love about the discipline I work in is that we start with values.

What kind of world do you want to create? And then think about how to use the technology to make that happen. So a site like Meetup does a fantastic. job of enhancing local community in really powerful ways. It's funny because I've been assigning my students to look at Meetup for since Meetup started, since the Howard Dean presidential campaign started Meetup. And it's one of those sites that I thought was going to die and I thought I would have to take it off my syllabus and find something new for people to look at. And it hasn't. It's still there and in fact has gotten stronger because it's such a powerful way to bring people to

in the real world. I think when you have values like in-person interaction is important, you can deliberately engineer how to use this technology to make that happen more in the way that you want to happen. In the book, you talk a bit about the fact that the social media infrastructure that exists today isn't designed with the end user really getting the best experience. It's designed around profiteering, which I mean, obviously we live under capitalism. like the investor class is fundamentally at odds with the interests of the individuals using it. If you're not paying for it, you're paying for it another way. And that's what we're experiencing when we see things like, you know,

these arguments that always like fill up every local news station channel, like whenever they post, memes, any of these things just blow up into these like arguments between people usually around politics. And Facebook likes that because that's how you get more ad exposure. That's how they learn more about you so they can. can design their algorithms better and all these things that are putting capital interests over the benefits of its users. You've already kind of suggested here and suggested in your book some of the alternatives

to these models. And I'd love to hear a little bit about your thoughts, maybe a little bit more thoroughly on what you think that future should look like. Andy, you make some great points. I don't think that trying to maximize shareholder value can make the right thing happen for either individuals or for communities. Look at a situation like the genocide in Myanmar. Part of what contributed to that was discussion on social media.

And Facebook meta didn't have enough moderators in Myanmar and didn't have enough native language moderation tools to realize what was happening in time to curb it. Now, if you look at it from the perspective of, this is a publicly traded company and they should invest their money things that enhance shareholder value, then no, spending money on Myanmar doesn't make any sense. It's a tiny market. It's not worth any money. Of course, you shouldn't invest in Myanmar. But when you look at it from a humanitarian perspective, it's a tragedy. I don't think telling

everyone just try and make money and it'll all work out makes any sense. I think markets are a lie. So then the question is, what's the alternative? And I think the alternative has to be more non-profits sites. Things like C corporations, is it C corporation or B corporation? Anyway, the corporations like Patagonia that have a code of values that they're obligated to abide by, and nonprofits, which can be funded by donations and by public dollars who are guided by values to say, no, we're not trying to make the most possible money here. We're trying to create something that helps make the world a better place in some fashion. And there need to be different kinds of sites with different competing values. So you can pick one that's comfortable for you. Yeah. And our former president tried to do that

with some success, I guess, in the sense that he was like, okay, I'm going to create the space that exists for people that agree with me. The challenge is that that's always driven by capital, and that means it's always going to inherently skew a certain way. You talked about mastodon in the book a bit. And I've seen a lot of people talk about it. It doesn't seem to really ever get much traction, though. I don't know if it's moving in the right direction or not. I'm not sure if you could speak a little bit about that. I know I'm putting you on the spot a little bit.

Yeah, this is tough. Mastodon is the right idea. And no, non-profit social media is never going to be as fancy or beautiful as social media with thousands of developers, making sure every layout is gorgeous and every function flows nicely. it's a problem. And some of the solutions to that might be in better education for kids about the nature of information and how to make smarter choices about what kinds of information sources you use on a regular basis. I don't think we can change until people start saying, you know what, this is not okay.

I need to find sources that are healthy for me. Just like I choose healthy foods to eat, I need to choose healthy meat. sites to be exposed to. Yeah. Now, given the post-truth era, I'm finally getting around to my question that I really wanted to ask you earlier, no, we've got all these moving pieces going on right now. The question of like, what is truth, the power of social media and like with Myanmar, how they can be leveraged by, like, by certain individuals that identify weak spots and what capital doesn't care about, fears of like ever-increasing surveillance from whether

it's the state or the state's cooperation with these social media giants and this weird blending of online and in-person living, as well as the impacts of these echo chambers that you brought up. There's a lot of moving pieces going on. And with all of these things moving on as somebody that spends a lot of time researching and writing on this subject, what does the idea of community look like in 10 or 20 years from now? I hope that community in 10 or 20 years takes many forms and that people have choices to find the kind of community that is suited to their interests and values. And people have choices between communities that are healthier and less healthy. I hope that people have choices and lots of alternatives. One of the big problems today

is the dominance by very large corporations to control the media landscape. The strange thing that happened this week that makes my head hurt is Elon Musk is, threatening to take Twitter private and make it a little more like Gab and Parlor, that's crazy that an individual, just because they have a lot of capital, can take a platform that has become part of our public sphere and totally change the rules on us. This doesn't make sense. And I hope that if that does happen, that people will avoid the platform and start going more to places like Mastodon, where maybe you can create. small spaces that suit your values.

Yeah, it's an interesting time. And as much as it's like, okay, well, based on what's happening a week ago, the future of community might look significantly different just based on the impacts of one particular person. Elon Musk being angry that trolls troll him all day on Twitter or whatever it might be, you know, he feels like his only response can be, I'm going to buy the company because I don't like the way I'm being treated on it or whatever. It's a weird time to be a lot.

You know, I wonder what Elon thinks about Myanmar and the role social media played in that genocide. I think he has a very naive idea of how managing a site like this is going to go. Yeah, I mean, you could just look at the way Tesla has been run and see his, like, total incomprehension of the dynamics of these types of complexities. Amy, so for folks that enjoyed this conversation, they want to hear more or check out your book. Do you have a website or social media handles, anything like that that you want to share? Yeah, I'm A.S. Brockman on Twitter. And I think my Google Scholar is a good place to look for my papers. And my book is, should you believe, Wikipedia, online communities, and the construction of knowledge.

Awesome. Amy, and you can get that book anywhere, local bookstore, or is it online only? Where can you get it? You can get it anywhere. Awesome. Awesome. Amy, this has been so much fun. Thanks so much for coming on.

Really a pleasure, Andy. Thanks for having me.