Synereo

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41

Its mutual, I am here to learn too, and I am - quietly at this point - excited at the prospect of a social network on SAFE (though of course that’s unlikely with Synereo at this point, but clearly a poss). I won’t support a project that I don’t believe in though, which is why I’m so keen to understand what you have in mind, and the motives of the Synereo team. These are still not clear, though I do appreciate what you’ve laid out so far. The gap still seems wide.

Please watch the Adam Curtis 1 & 2, ideally your whole team if you are sincere here. Saying the above, I think you are either seeing the world through fundamentally different beliefs, or you just aren’t aware of the power and effect of advertising, how it evolved, and how destructive it is to human autonomy and healthy action.

Let’s face it, if advertising wasn’t possible, and companies had to simply rely of providing the best product, they’d focus on providing the best product, and things would be better than if they spent billions a year on advertising.

And if you won’t watch Adam Curtis, at least go watch the Bill Hicks sketch on advertising :smile:

WTF are you saying here? I’ll let you clarify!

I’d like to understand:

  • Why do you think advertising money is needed for an online community. Such a community will have costs on SAFE, but they will be negligable, unnoticable micropayments, easily paid for by someone sharing some disk space - no money needed. This is a different model - do you understand this yet?
  • Why do you think its “good” for a product to win out because someone advertises it, and gets ahead of a product that is not advertised? How does that benefit humanity? Would it not be better if we had access to factual information, and reviews from people we regard as impartial, and were not influenced unconsciously by imprinting (repetition), false associations with unconscious needs (for loved, security, creativity), or tracking that enables a vendor to identify and target us at the precise moment their pitch is most likely to get us to do what they want? Compare those processes to a vendor that is solely focussed on determining what we need, listening to us, and producing the best possible product. Compare it to the vendor who has a better product, but hasn’t grown big enough to afford the latest and greatest consumer-manipulation tech. Which is best for humanity?
  • How is advertising ever going to be “like flowers” when there’s a direct feedback mechanism from profit to advertising budget to profit, and our actual needs are subjugated in the process?

I think its possible to build a social network (and indeed any other service) on a decentralised system without using the traditional model of a business. In fact that is the whole point of this project, to create a different model. Builders still get rewarded, and far more people can be builders here because the cost of entry is very low, and scalability is built in rather than a barrier. All that’s needed is to create the best app, and that’s it.

This is the model that MaidSafe Limited say that they will segway into - competing against other app development teams and PODs on an equal basis. Obviously they’ll have a big knowledge advantage, but they are a tiny company so it leaves 99% of the field open to others, and internet services is an enormous field, so its an enormous opportunity.

What do you have in mind here? I’m not familiar with any existing sponsored online communities and can’t imagine why they would be unable to develop. As I’ve mentioned, the service infrastructure doesn’t need paying for in the traditional manner, so I’m assuming you aren’t referring to that.

I see you’ve posted a link so I’ll take a look. Not right now tho!

EDIT: Ok, I speed read it. It doesn’t enlighten me on the key questions really. We can agree social networks are broken (like most things that are businesses, because they put profit above all else) and being centralised don’t properly cater to our needs. What I’m not yet understanding is anything about the nature of your team (organisation, who you are, what ties you together, goals, plans, motivation) and what you are aiming for with Synereo. I can see potential for common ground but there isn’t sufficient detail, beyond an apparent difference on the nature and role of advertising.

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42

Lots to talk about! But quickly on Adam Curtis: I’m a fan, although I have criticisms that are not worth raising here. But I attended this last year and it was awesome: Massive Attack V Adam Curtis : Program & Events

I also show this to my students every year:

=)

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Yes, let’s continue the discussion.

Regarding the excerpt, its good, and it failed to materialise because…?

Well, I’m not certain about the reasons (its a while since I watched that :-)) although I can speculate, but the outcome is clear. The networks have been controlled and co-opted. Business has been the dominant force in this in the West, government in China and most recently in Russia, with the five eyes and others rapidly catching up - or rather, being more open about what they’ve been building post Snowden, and now trying to justify it.

Isn’t the point of the blockchain, project SAFE etc., to allow this to materialise by taking it out of those hands and placing it firmly back in the hands of the populous?

Anyway, I’ll leave this until you’ve had a chance to respond. (Also note the EDIT at the bottom of my preceding post).

EDIT: Ok, I fixed the misspelling of Synereo in the OP and most other posts :#)

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44

“Who is going to put forward the resources for this social network?”

– We’re going to have a crowdsale next month. We have a few established funds looking to participate as well.

“Alternatively will this “social network” be a protocol for a web-page, or some other means of posting and exchanging data (e.g. a Safe application).”

– We’re hard at work on our own, unique technological architecture. Expect a white paper soon.

“Will there be constant development or will this be a fire-and-forget project (no customer service, but no corporate liability either)?”

– Constant development.

“If certain communities are more open to advertisement (and therefore generate more revenue), how will you balance these differing economies, to prevent freeloaders (this may go back to who puts forward the resources)?”

– There’s no need for balance in this sense.

Synereo is a NON-PROFIT. Most AMPs used in the system to amplify any sort of information flow will be relayed directly to the users on the receiving end of that flow. The non-profit company will take the minimum possible fee allowing it to continue development. We guarantee that we will continuously strive to minimize that fee.

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45

I’ve watched most of Adam’s documentaries and have studied a lot of psychology throughout my years in the academy. What I gather from it is not that marketing in itself is problematic - Adam himself shows examples of “benign” advertising, simply presenting an option to the potential market, describing the utility of a product - but rather that the western culture of ego-based capitalism is. Our economic system intertwined with our cultural beliefs and our model of our “self” are the problems. But that’s just my opinion, and even if I thought marketing was problematic in and of itself as you do, I would still argue that has an explicit place in a social network, because -

This is wrong. There is no world in which “advertising isn’t possible”.
Advertising is found everywhere in nature. Forget the flowers and the bees - take a look at the peacock.

They sacrifice their chance of providing “the best product” to increase their fitness and survive through attention-grabbing. They allocate their resources in a way that increases their chances of attracting others to their “product”.

There always were and always will be “cheaters” trying to manipulate others with fake signals. Utilizing insight from psychology to shape the signals in a more impactful manner is just the latest iteration. It is an arms race, and until we all have “perfect information” about everything, it’s going to persist.

Likewise, as Eripsa has been saying, you absolutely cannot disallow advertising. You cannot know if anyone on this forum has been paid by any entity to push a specific agenda or opinion on you. You have no way to tell which message is “genuine” and which is “advertising” – assuming there exist an ideal message that lacks any form of advertisement.

I think this is the issue here - you are an idealist. :slight_smile: You have in mind an ideal social network, perhaps built as a MaidSafe app, where no advertising exists. But how are you going to prevent all of the types of advertising that Eripsa has mentioned? An attempt of this sort is the equivalent of burying your head in the sand. Advertising is an innate part of human existence, of life, and the fact that “money” is involved does not make for a qualitative difference in the sense that there are and there will always be ways to invest resources in broadcasting your signal louder than anyone else’s. It is the way things are.

What Synereo is hoping to do is to make this interaction -

  1. Explicit, so that it may be acknowledged and utilized to the benefit of all participants rather than hidden and supporting only those with means while manipulating those who haven’t them.

  2. Controllable, by allowing individuals and groups to avoid different types and subjects of advertising – this, with the goal that advertisers will be content with the crowd that allows it to advertise and not seek hidden means of getting to the unwilling crowds.

  3. Mutual. Since advertisers are affected by the same reputation mechanisms in the system (expect a white paper soon), they are encouraged to produce high-quality content that may be appreciated by their crowds - or come to the point where advertising on the platform doesn’t make economic sense for them. That is to say - the more your content is organically appreciated, the less you pay for users’ attention.
    You will not be seeing obnoxious content in Synereo, and generally won’t come across content that you don’t care for. And if, for any reason, you do - you can always turn off the information flow from a specific advertiser, from a specific community or based on a specific interest, or altogether!

Keep in mind, Synereo’s AMPing mechanism is available system-wide and not just to “advertisers”. Anyone can decide to invest in ways to amplify his signal in the network. It doesn’t have to be about trying to sell people on the product that you promise will fill the hole in their souls.

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You misunderstand me, so let me explain.

I am not saying it is possible to prevent people from trying to advertise covertly, my example was not “idealism”. I wasn’t saying it was possible to eliminate all advertising, I was illustrating what would happen if there were no advertising in business. My point in posing that hypothetical situation, was to demonstrate that in general, its a good thing to minimise the impact of advertising within business - or as I keep pointing out and you guys seem to ignore - to try and break the link between money creating powerful advertising creating more profit - rather than to facilitate it.

This appears to be our fundamental difference. Rather than address the point I’ve made, you say advertising is everywhere, as if all attention getting is the same as our economically integrated advertising.

You paint advertising as “out there” (flowers, peacocks etc.) and therefore not a problem. Ok, I’m not against peacocks. Or flowers. Nope they’re ok by me. Yes, I’m ok with that kind of “advertising”, but it has no relevance to what I am saying is a problem. Atoms come together in many forms, some I like, some are downright dangerous. Even cyanide has its uses. If you think advertising in business is good, say so and argue against my reasons for saying its part of a self-destructive economic system. I don’t propose to solve everything with this one measure, what I am saying is that you are not helping if you facilitate advertising, and that on SAFE Network you have a choice.

I do not understand your position. On the one hand you argue (with peacocks) that advertising is ok, or at least has to be allowed on Synereo because covert advertising can’t be totally eliminated.

But you also have pointed out that we have an economic system in which you seem to concede, advertising in various forms is used for mass manipulation, influence and control of the population (consumers, voters, etc.). But you then ignore that, as if … because flowers. Eh? It makes no senseI’ve asked several clear questions in my posts but you guys have just ignored them (Why?) and then repeated the same, to me, quite illogical arguments.

I am saying:

  • if you accept advertising can be a problem (intertwined with our ego based economic whatever), then let’s do something to mitigate it.
  • you don’t mitigate covert advertising by facilitating overt advertising.

What I believe is:

  • the vast majority of commercial advertising we are exposed to is manipulative, focussed purely on profit, and part of a self-destructive economic system. Tackling advertising is one part of dealing with the problems of the system. Most businesses are actually unable to partake in this because the advertising we are exposed to is dominated by money. This itself is a problem. Like party funding, paid lobbying, revolving doors. All corrupt the “free market” by creating a market which those with money can dominate by advertising.
  • for the above reasons, it is a bad thing to facilitate advertising if you can make your money in other ways. Maybe not always, but I’d start from that position, and want strong arguments as to why one would forgo a business model that limited advertising rather than one that facilitates it. And as a user and consumer I’ll choose to avoid advertising and encourage others to do the same.
  • it is possible to mitigate covert advertising. My twitter feed is full of people who could be shilling, paid or not. Facebook less, I know most of my connections there personally. On Diaspora I had a lot of propaganda during the recent Gaza war. But on those services covert advertising/propaganda is easy to spot. As human beings, we have faculties for identifying sources who spew out propaganda. What we need are the means to filter those sources out. Yes, people will always try to subvert those, and manipulate us, but that is not a reason to throw your hands up in the air, smile, and say “what else can we do but facilitate advertising”. For me, its an opportunity to give users the best tools we can to make that hard (reputation was mentioned), but TBH I haven’t needed that on Twitter or Diaspora. All I’ve needed is to know people can’t go to the site owners and push ads at me for money. On facebook they can, but interestingly I get very little because I always mark it as spam. On twitter its planned, but not happened to me yet. As you build a new service, everything you do to make advertising more complex, require more work, cost more etc. limits its effectiveness and reduces its influence. Naturally facebook and twitter do exactly this - they don’t want spam or “advertising” that bypasses their ad-service. Paid likes are hit hard etc., reported spammers removed. Most of Google’s effort goes into eliminating web spam, so they can sell advertising. Conversely, everything you do to facilitate advertising reduces its cost, creates more of it and makes it harder for people to avoid or ignore, which undermines their autonomy.

For a bunch of intelligent guys, you really seem blinkered and arguing against logic, apparently to preserve your desired lucrative business model. But there is another business model available on SAFE Network.

Your ignoring my questions and persistent defence of an advertising based model suggests that you simply don’t agree that advertising is a problem. But you don’t actually come out and say that, which I find confusing. This is why I’ve asked what you think is a problem, with no answer.

Is your position that advertising, intertwined with our ego economic culture, are not a problem? Or do you see a problem with any of that, and if so what? Or are you just pushing those concerns aside because you see an opportunity to make a pile? If so, that’s fine, but be honest about it. You are not alone.

47

So long and engaging discussion!
Meanwhile Synereo paper has been arrived. And Synereo team do not using the SafeNet and building independent CDN, except Omni Layer dependency for AMPs. I am wondering what is the reasoning?
I lack technical expertise to comprehend this stuff deeply. So I want to ask you the question:

Is that possible to implement Synereo’s math and Social contract’s logic on the SafeNet?

Regards for any comments.

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48

Yes :slight_smile: If it can be done nosql then zero problem

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Thanks, Irvine.
It seems they do it nosql.

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Hey guys!

Long time.

We’re launching our crowdsale tomorrow.
Come check it out.

http://www.synereo.com/

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51

Good luck guys, I hope all goes well for you!

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52

http://insidebitcoins.com/news/factom-announces-partnership-with-synereo/31794

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53

I think the easiest way to resolve the concerns about “mass advertising” is to point out that it can’t exist there. We’re not talking about 1-way channels anymore.

Not sure why that didn’t come out clearer before, but as often happens, people end up talking last each other over side issues.

There is no way for “big money” to enter the attention economy of synereo, and find a mass market (unless that market all opted in for such ads). They traditionally buy views, and in order to get views here, they need to be a part of an actual community, and have connections to that market. While making such connections, they develop a Reputation (REO). This helps their reach, but again, only to those who have made a connection with them.

Advertising is an old-age term. The new paradigm forces a new philosophy, and this one is based on Information, and of course, Networks. So in the new framing, when you can eliminate the bad information from a message, “advertising” becomes simply free flowing information, which is what it needs to be in order to have things like free markets, democracy, etc.

I think that answers your question.

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Forgive me because I don’t know the details, but can’t a big advertiser purchase your coin and through that use the coin to promote content?

I thought that was how this was designed to work.

Or if not, then can’t they pay individuals who have the means to promote content?

Or use their resources to build an army of participants who act on their behalf, whether those participants are AI’s or rooms full of sweatshop labour.

One way or another I don’t see how an advertising (pay to promote) model cannot be corrupted here. We have equivalent attacks to deal with in SAFEnetwork, with both farming and PtP.

Farming is more robust because it is much easier to ensure that a farmer’s resources are real, and that it will not be profitable to centralise them. So I’m pretty confident that will be achieved.

PtP is not clear yet, but again I’m inclined to think the design will work by making it unprofitable to promote content using various means - I think focusing on creating great content will be the most profitable approach, and that this will be a brake on centralisation, just as it is with farming.

I think it is going to be more difficult for you to achieve this kind of “brake” because my understanding is that promotion/advertising is part of your model. This makes me think it is unlikely that you can both use it positively (genuine participation rewarded with ability to promote) and make it unprofitable to promote content for profit or influence (eg political).

I think a social network that doesn’t suffer from this is possible, but I don’t see how that can be achieved with advertising in the mix. If you’ve removed that, I’ll be very interested and like to learn more because that’s the only reason I can’t support Synereo at this point.

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Well, they can certainly come in and buy all the AMPs they want! :slight_smile:

However, they cannot spend them so easily. Worth repeating: this is not a 1-way connected network, where all who are on that large dominant channel (built by giant corporations with large quantities of capital invested) can see all the content.

Worth expounding: this is also not just the same thing, but with 2-way connectivity between central host and extended members. This is 2-way and distributed. That means we have to include the concept of fractals, or Compositionality. This kind of network model is not hypothetical, we can use the brain’s neurons, or masses in space to understand how even large, dominant parts of the network do not go beyond a certain size. It’s nonlinear reality, with complex inputs, and there are limits brought about by multiple forces or actors.

So, maybe imagine before there were central banks, and banks did not exchange their individual currencies (markers of value). A large business can accumulate a huge pile of this money, but can only spend it within the physically connected region, because the members who would receive this money have a connection. This is repeated across the whole area, which is made up of smaller regions on intra-connected members.

This could be resolved by the regions establishing trade rules - an obvious analogy is with modern nations and their banks, except that they have pretty much all connected to each other already. In the growing Synereo network, this will not be the case - at least initially. Like those agreeing banks, there would have to be real relationships made, and trust gained in order to agree to exchange value markers.

For example, you ask about 1000 people (or at least accounts!) being hired/set-up/controlled by a large AMP holder. And of course, you’d have these 1000 members all connect to each other, as “friends”, and you might think that gives them equal footing to an actual 1000 member group, but this is not the case. Reputation is also managed in this system, with a score called REO, which acts as a multiplier on your network transaction fees (this is not actually how it happens, but is indistinguishable from it). The 1000-bot network will not have any connections outside of themselves. To get a good REO score, you will need to be multiply-connected, and somewhere along the way, to many members with good REO. In other words, fractal, since the network itself is multiply-connected, and contains many large nodes.

The scammer group will not have and connections to already established REO. They literally stand out sorely in the whole network because they are not fractal. So they can AMP up a bunch of ads (posts) that will reach each other at a reasonable cost, but without those outside connections, the cost of breaking that barrier with any significance is effectively infinite. Again, there will be some “noobs” who do make connections with these groups from time to time, and if they do not have the right settings enabled, might see some of these ads, but would not maintain this condition for long. Any reasonable adult in the modern age of Information understands how to use tools like ad blocking, unfriending, muting, etc.

So yes, those points you brought up about “cost of ____” (any action on the network, really - we can say mining, farming, or paying attention, engaging…) being critical for maintaining an equilibrium state within these kind of systems are right on. “Focusing on great content” is the same thing that we are saying here - and that results in real, multiply-connected, many large node containing networks, that do not have run-away nodes of concentrated power.

Spam will die fast, and hard. Good content will spread easily through the network, growing with positive response along the way. The AMPs cannot overcome this limitation.

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56

Thanks - this sounds very different to what was being described a year or more ago. Is that because things have changed, or because you’ve described it differently?

I haven’t followed or looked into Synereo because none of the responses didn’t alleviate my concerns. This appears to do so, at least in respect of non-targetted paid promotion.

What is the role of paid advertising, if any? I’m taking your post to be about paid promotion.

Also, I think it is still going to be open to those who do have influence and connections, to sell their influence. Any system that has paid promotion built in is I think going to be susceptible to this. I still see it as a social network equivalent of product endorsement, placement, celebrity association etc. which are to me advertising and buying influence, which in turn corrupt and do harm when this moves from empathic sharing to psychopathic control and abuse.

They are many ways that those with wealth can and will exert influence and manipulate, and I’m still fundamentally untrusting of a system that sells influence, even if that influence only extends within more localised groups.

For example, Synereo facilitates payment for influence, and while you correctly say it would cost more to reach a large portion of the network, it makes it cheaper to target influence at groups that advertisers are focusing on.

So aren’t you therefore facilitating targeted advertising? Which is exactly what corporations are now investing billions in because it is more cost effective to target at such groups, than it is to spend on non-targeted advertising. This is why google and facebook have such high valuations, and profits.

Your model is different from facebook, but I don’t see how allowing paid promotion can be done without facilitating pathological promotion (by which I mean promotion based on profit, rather than promotion based on human helping human).

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Good follow up questions!

This is nothing new, I think that the conversations before were getting off track with side issues. Not to worry. Also, those 2 (Dor Konforty and Daniel Estrada) were pretty much the only two writing about this, with the new context of a distributed (cloud) kind of network that runs its own crypto, and they both have been busy doing other things. I found them and have been doing in depth research into the related areas, and writing (unpub) on it for the past year. I’d like to think I have refined the case, and brought some new explanatory power to the table. It’s a complex subject, and is not easy to pick the angle that will be understood the easiest.

Ok. There is no paid advertising. No central server - so this is impossible!

Influence? Yes. Not only the physical nodes, but the standard, high reputation, densely connected types of people that exist in physical society too. Will they “sell-out” for some AMP payment by a commercial interest? They might, but their high REO score would not be maintained if they shared (spammed) their followers with some new Ad. There is some give and take here, with the results not being instantaneous.

It goes back to quality content, and not only influencers, but ad creators (and their corporate payors) will have to focus on better content, that gives something of value. Plus, with these local networks being shaped as they are, if you pay (say) Madonna to promote your (say) new electric car, the 2 audiences do not overlap well. In the same fashion that there are limits between individual members, there will be the same between nodes, and influencers. The end result should be that only the Madonna fans that are also car fans, and have their settings enabled to receive ads would see this promoted post. Another thing to keep in mind is that there is that 2-way connection requirement, so Madonna has to have a 1-to-1 relationship with each “fan”. You can see that this will not be easy, nor directly translatable from existing networks. The REO score will get stale quickly, and also, it is calculated for each connection! So you only have a high REO with actual people who you maintain some kind of positive contact with.

You might say that “selling” your influence is synonymous with “losing it”.

Also, note that I said “effectively infinite cost”, not merely “expensive”. This takes away most of the advantage that coming in with big bucks gives you.

Let’s look at a couple of these things from the other side of the equation though, because they are equally interesting, and have potential to greatly disrupt the status quo system.

If you are Madonna, or the “next” one, you can eliminate the need for a record label with this network system. You will have a 1-to-1 relationship with each fan, and they can buy your product directly form you, cutting out an entire industry of monopolistic middlemen.

It will also (I predict) create a whole new class (or at least greatly augment some of the ones that exist already) of jobs, giving non-famous types equal opportunity to become “influencers”. They can do this, for example, by ongoing fact-checking, or other kind of information management and quality curation.

Let’s not forget that without the middlemen, the monies paid into promotion go to the people receiving them. That means great disruption to the giant media monopolies, including FB and Google as you mentioned. And they keep the cost effectiveness of target “advertising” - but is it really an ad anymore? That’s one of the subtle points that was trying to be made earlier. When it becomes “word of mouth”, it’s not the same.

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58

so is this going to use maidsafe network? what was the final verdict?

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At the moment the CSO Greg Meredith is working on Casper which may be used to power both Ethereum’s and Synereo’s POS model. It seems natural that every decentralized tech in the future would layer some facet of their stack onto the SafeNetwork.

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I wanna know this as well. Has there been any official hints or comments on this?