Here are my personal thoughts on
App.net (ADN).
I'm not saying that these ideas are
in any way conclusive, but after spending a little over a week on the site my experiences
and observations made me feel wary on several fronts.
It may be fixable, or maybe not.
As I understand it, App.net was set up to be a haven for developers to create
an environment independent from the influence of advertisers -- allowing them
creative freedom -- and was successfully launched as a subscription service in the
summer.
After I signed up last week everything seemed great: lots of friendly chit chat
and the ability to talk freely about things on different levels. And because it
offered room for 256 characters as opposed to Twitter’s 140, it allowed for
broader conversation with intelligent people – less broadcast, more chat.
The presence of the global stream similar to the one which was removed from
Twitter, where I have been a member since 2008, seemed a benefit.
I noticed I was being followed by several people who described themselves as “Christian”
in their bios. It made me wonder about what it meant to advertise being Christian
in a social media bio because it is a bit different than saying you are a
parent, a journalist or a developer, for example.
In some ways, it's like stating an opinion on an
issue which in real-life polite social arenas might typically better be avoided – as with
other difficult topics such as politics, etc. It’s a bit like taking an
in-your-face stand – similar to dropping a bombshell at a party that’s humming
happily along by proclaiming: “I'm a conservative” or “I'm a leftist” or “I'm a
civil libertarian”.
It made me wonder what would happen if I said certain things that were not
acceptable to those with “Christian” in their bio and/or if I might be targeted
if I said the wrong thing. I was reminded of the spambots on Twitter that
appear with those odd bios of broken bits of sentence fragments and numbers.
On Twitter, I do not follow back or engage with people making potentially
confrontational claims in their bios – or I would block them -- because I want
to avoid conflict.
I was interacting with some of the Christians
who were following me, and then suddenly got worried over a silly discussion about
bacon I became involved in -- I know it probably sounds crazy, but I just got
this feeling that to be part of that discussion about liking bacon, which went
on and on and got bigger and bigger and had more and more people copied in,
with people proclaiming their Christianity in their bios made it kind of
exclusionary -- possibly an affront -- to people from religions that don't eat
pork.
I kept my thoughts to myself and didn't say anything about it, but I said I wanted to leave the discussion.
But it was difficult to get out -- impossible in fact. So I muted the people and deleted updates that
showed my involvement in it.
On a basic level it proves the need to have a way to block people, mute
conversations, direct message (DM) – all those basic aspects of Twitter, or
even as with Google Plus (G+) where you can create circles and decide who to
share what with, but on App.net I felt totally vulnerable -- even your own
stream is compulsorily public and there’s no way to selectively hide it.
But it also shows that despite its utopian goals to outdo Twitter with its
oodles of trolls and data monitors, App.net may not be altogether free of the
same.
After that first big discussion about bacon, in a separate thread I noticed in the global stream some of the people involved in the
bacon chat started talking about hating the Taliban and bombing villages in
Afghanistan containing populations supportive of the radical Sunni
Muslim movement.
On the heels of the chat about bacon, it suddenly seemed like the
environment was not so beautiful as it had been over the previous few days.
I thought: "Perhaps an antagonistic U.S. Christian fundamentalism biased against
other religions is the underpinning theme of the environment."
People are entitled to their political views and religious beliefs, and on a very basic level blocking or
whatever other technical means necessary could solve the problem for an
individual who does not want to be a part of such a circle within the network.
But these mechanisms don’t exist on ADN.
I started thinking about the entire project.
Lots of people have paid $50 to sign
up for the service, but what do they really get for their money?
They get a social networking/broadcasting site if they are people like me, and
if they are a developer they get a good opportunity to make stuff to take the
site beyond its bare bones and improve its functionality so that the founders
can sell more subscriptions. Developers have
the chance to make money too from their endeavours.
This is what App.net say on their site:
"We are operating a sustainable, predictable business. App.net will always
have a clear business model. We know that depending on services that could go
away or desperately squeeze users for more and more money is a toxic cycle. We
want our ecosystem to rest easy that App.net is built on a financially solid
foundation."
That doesn't tell me much. Maybe they have one, but I didn't see it on their
site -- what is the actual business model?
What's the ultimate objective?
For users it's total chaos. All the protections built into other sites are not
there. No opportunity to DM, no way to protect a feed, no way to block people,
etc. Most importantly, no way to report people for abusive behaviour.
Conversations get hijacked. People add too many people in -- it's similar to
what can happen to a comment thread on G+.
It's anarchy.
Apparently, it's up to random developers to bring random order to it – if they
feel like it!
When I subscribed, I paid with a corporate credit card because ADN don't offer
PayPal as an option for payment, and I didn't want to give them my personal card details.
App.net says those who “join the movement” will not be subject to having their personal
data, content, feed, interests, clicks or anything else sold to advertisers. ADN
data will remain in the full control of the user, the site says.
At the same time, they say “we hope
developers build large, robust businesses on top of our platform” which in my personal opinion does
not preclude developers and others using – or even observing the site without joining
it – from monitoring or retrieving user data, selling it or forming opinions
based on it.
I am concerned that by default – because I cannot control my
environment – that I may be perceived as being associated with some trends on
App.net by having my moniker attached to certain chats or because certain people are
following me.
I can mute them, but I can’t block them.
****Lawn of the dead garden gnome picture courtesy of @kosso
***NB:
Since I wrote this blog post, many kind members of ADN have beckoned me
back to the site. Including one user who has told me that a developer
has fixed the problem. I have not yet had time to check.
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