Problems around social media (which are similar as you say) are half-mainstream in the media today, such as in Black Mirror.
I agree this seems important, but also It’s a topic that people are aware of.
I would personally be happy to see an EA take on it (probably worth one person researching it at least to come up with general plans or listing existing ones), though it seems to require expertise which goes beyond my own.
Defining a good regulation for this kind of problem is complicated, even if we could arbitrarily write laws (but assuming we could do so only once).
For example, it seems to me like “you must allow avatars into your environment” would be wrong:
Big companies could DDOS small competitors with avatars that the small competitors will have to accept
I think that defining the data as public is better. Imagine if any company could create their own UI for Facebook, and have all the people and posts available.
I’m aware that defining such a data structure is not trivial, but it seems like a better direction to me
There are open source social networks that have a similar vision to this in mind. Part of the hard problem of starting a new social network is coordinating everyone to move to it. Perhaps EAs would have something smart to suggest around there
If I am at least partially right about this, then it isn’t a huge $100M project. The hard parts might be solved by a few smart people thinking about it together, and then they’ll publish the solution for existing open source social networks to adopt. I don’t know. That is why I’d personally have one person flesh out directions as a first step, and I wouldn’t reject this project just because more important (1000x more expensive) projects exist (which will often need different people working on them. This here isn’t a math problem, I think)
Problems around social media (which are similar as you say) are half-mainstream in the media today, such as in Black Mirror.
I agree this seems important, but also It’s a topic that people are aware of.
I would personally be happy to see an EA take on it (probably worth one person researching it at least to come up with general plans or listing existing ones), though it seems to require expertise which goes beyond my own.
Anyway, you have my upvote
My own take:
Defining a good regulation for this kind of problem is complicated, even if we could arbitrarily write laws (but assuming we could do so only once).
For example, it seems to me like “you must allow avatars into your environment” would be wrong:
Big companies could DDOS small competitors with avatars that the small competitors will have to accept
I think that defining the data as public is better. Imagine if any company could create their own UI for Facebook, and have all the people and posts available.
I’m aware that defining such a data structure is not trivial, but it seems like a better direction to me
There are open source social networks that have a similar vision to this in mind. Part of the hard problem of starting a new social network is coordinating everyone to move to it. Perhaps EAs would have something smart to suggest around there
If I am at least partially right about this, then it isn’t a huge $100M project. The hard parts might be solved by a few smart people thinking about it together, and then they’ll publish the solution for existing open source social networks to adopt. I don’t know. That is why I’d personally have one person flesh out directions as a first step, and I wouldn’t reject this project just because more important (1000x more expensive) projects exist (which will often need different people working on them. This here isn’t a math problem, I think)