Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Creating the Future of the Internet | Michael Casey - Chief Content Officer & Chairman at CoinDesk

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Lessons - Creating the Future of the Internet | Michael Casey - Chief Content Officer & Chairman at CoinDesk · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  Scott for a thousand dollars off in this lessons episode explore the flaws of today's internet
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  and why decentralization hasn't lived up to its promise learn how data control token economics
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  and algorithmic influence shape our online world and what it will take to rebuild a truly open
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  user-owned digital future
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  you've looked at so many examples of how decentralization hasn't worked i mean we can
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  we can name we can name a couple different founders right we can talk about them too but and the
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  projects they built but when you look at what you're trying to do with project liberty with
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  the sort of the thesis of our biggest fight you're you're making the argument that we have to
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  go back to a decentralized internet and we have infrastructure we have to rework
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  but we've been trying to do this with blockchain web 3 NFTs and a lot of the stuff isn't working
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  so i'm trying to identify what are the things that we have to incorporate in the future of the
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  internet your version of the future of the internet that's going to make it so so certainly
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  the core protocol change that we are highlighting as an example of the kinds of fixes that need to
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  happen in this book the the decentralized social networking protocol or DSMP one of the features of
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  it is that that even though it actually it relies on a blockchain underneath it for a certain
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  amount of of data validation and and creating a steady state of information underneath that
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  and it's core it doesn't have a token so it doesn't have a sort of a speculative element to it
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  and and i think that's actually really really important you know there's this idea about how
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  you design the tokenomics of a of a Bitcoin i think it's sorry of a block chain so that
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  you you manage the supply and demand of the underlying token such that it doesn't get
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  overwhelmed by the speculative thing if there's people that are madly buying the token because they
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  all betting on the next big thing then flood it with supply and bring the price down because
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  that's not what you're trying to achieve how you do that algorithmically so it's not nobody in charge
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  because then that in itself was a question of decentralization is a is a really important question
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  but i think at its core is like this you you need a permissionless decentralized architecture and
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  that's what within a blockchain contract a context a token is necessary for these other sort of
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  permission blockchains have all failed because at the end of the day there's a point of failure
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  in some entity that's in charge and that's really defeating the purpose the thing is how do you get
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  to this idea where the token that you need to enable this incentive driven permissionless system
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  isn't overtaken by the speculative further and that's where this token database comes into it so
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  I think Ethereum in fact is very good to look at because I think there's been an enormous amount of
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  work that figuring out how do you actually manage the token supply and the incentives behind
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  that to keep this thing honest um and so I think that's really an important part of this
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  and to bring it back to the book and and so the DSMP I think we feel and the folks at project
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  liberty who are behind this is if you had a token in there and and that became the sort of defining
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  feature of the protocol it would just get overwhelmed by once again all the hype right you don't want
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  this to be the point of this book is not to create yet another get rich opportunity for people to
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  be able to change the infrastructure right and and and yes you need to have truly
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  commissionless systems that that that enable that but the layers you know you we're those things lie
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  within the stack are really important you know you mentioned that the first decentralized technology
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  that you got interested in was the internet so obviously you've been you've been around for a while
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  you've you've been here or I guess Jeremy age okay so let us let's talk about how the internet's
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  changed like let's talk about what it was meant to be and how it's broken so I think like
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  to think about the broken part um the journey that I've been on and we've all been on it by the way
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  but I think as a journalist um who whose career spanned really the the pre internet age to now
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  I used to literally write for a newspaper and the only vehicle we had to get that news out was a
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  physical newspaper it wasn't many years by the way I'm not that old until it was quickly the internet
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  came around and we had to think about that but I like to you know think about what was
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  happening at that point and we were first of all excited wow look at all this information that's
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  available to us and then not long down the path you know in the media industry we started to
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  think a little bit oh my goodness this could be a challenge to our business model but the mindset
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  we had at the time was we're going to be competed out of this by bloggers and citizen journalists and
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  and a whole range of new um you know free-to-air website-based services that are just going to
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  get into this so much more cheaply than we can and I was always conflicted by my concerns because
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  I was thinking you know what but this is probably good for democracy you know having all the more
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  voices out there who are able to to contribute and weigh in on on the big sort of public discourse
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  so I was like you know we're going to live with this but come you know as as we say the app era this
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  is post you know the worldwide web the dot-com boom and all the sudden Facebook and Twitter the
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  social media phenomena were there and you know I'd been just writing doing my beautiful job of
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  writing an article or two or three or four every every day and then suddenly I was also having
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  a book post out and then podcasts and then TV and then most importantly I was having to tweet
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  and you know we were all encouraged to be on social media because we had to fight to keep the
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  eyeballs on us must compete with the you know in the internet attention grabbing game right why
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  because the platforms were now constantly pushing us everywhere else and then you start to realize
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  that you know you're actually competing yeah not with these alternative news outlets but with
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  the algorithm itself because Facebook wanted your your eyeballs for the for their own advertisers not
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  for us and then we think one step further and you look at the phenomenon that maybe some of your
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  readers and viewers will be aware of SEO the famous search engine optimization concept and anybody
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  in media I'm sure you will this will Scott has to play this game right it's figuring out what
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  hey online that's changed everything right but what are you doing in that process you're trying to
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  write the optimal catchy thing to keep an algorithm happy because it probably also I've seen in
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  your media operation like wow why is this thing not getting any attention right now
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  off Google yeah Google tweak the hour of course it's but it's not just then it's a social and
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  you're like figuring out everything what's the latest dance that I got to do on text luckily so it's
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  all but yeah it is right so we like to talk in the book about how the algorithm in fact is is
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  is actually a combination of two factors it's the little software that is written to perform a certain
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  repeated task but the other half it is actually biological right it's whatever it is that's
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  clicking in our brains that responding to and if that's not getting enough engagement then the
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  algorithm itself will tweak to find the next thing that is and that becomes the re reiterated iterative
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  thing so these algorithms are one part software one part biological and that's really what's kind
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  of scary about this is a human hack that's been going on for 20 years I just want to take a second
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  dummies so you sort of realize that as a journalist and and you know what am I doing why we even
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  doing this this is the moment that I think I really realized that in fact I think probably the
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  the big aha moment of how broken it truly was was in 2016 and there was a famous article
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  on Buzzfeed about this website that these kids literally teenagers in Macedonia had created
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  in the middle of the you know a very fraught us election at that time right and they figured out
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  that to generate a flywheel effect of ongoing shares and retweets and likes and everything that
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  you need to get engagement in this social media environment all they had to do was just to make
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  stuff up and land it in in a very highly passionate driven group on facebook so
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  2016 and if you wrote an article as these guys did of Obama's birth certificate found in Kenya
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  or Pope Francis endorses Donald Trump or in fact there was also some some that were actually
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  far more targeted at liberals right that would say like mass migration from the US to Ireland
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  you know Trump flight migration patterns and all these sorts of things none of which were happening
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  but because they triggered what people wanted to know amongst their very closed echo chamber
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  facebook framed groups they got enormous traction so think about this right I was working at the
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  the Wall Street Journal at the time we had an editor in chief below him as a deputy editor then
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  there was a whole line of sub editors I have my own managing editor um we had lawyers we we put
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  we had a we had buildings we we put um we gave people security clearances to go to wars right
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  the cost of building and working on finding the truth and ensuring that that truth was delivered
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  was enormous to actually establish and stand up what we were doing and we were now being
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  competed out of it by bunch of kids in Macedonia who'd figured out how to game the algorithm
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  better than we could with complete and utter lies so obviously you know social media platforms they
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  take advantage of that because that's what drives engagement drives viewership the the commercial
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  model is the more people on the platform the more money we make because they're not selling a product
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  or service so they've massively capitalized not just social like a lot of big tech um government
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  doesn't keep up with legislation government actually participating in the process not necessarily
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  out of any nefarious and stupid they all have to right they're going to play the same social media
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  guys they use that social for their own benefit right so politicians are all themselves
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  participating in the same system and you have some examples like you have like um uh a ccpa
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  and gdpr where they're trying to but it's still slow right so now this is this is like the central
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  thesis is we got to do something better we got to rebuild i think the way we look at things like
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  the those those two well-meaning and and obviously earnest and important acts of the you know
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  california in the european one um what was that look trying to solve the right problem but actually
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  still not low enough down in the stack right they're they're they're dealing with the surface
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  level problem our argument is it's the control of the data that enables those breaches of privacy
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  that enables the controls that have to be that needs to be addressed and the solution that we're
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  addressing in this book is the uh the idea that we we can build protocol a pro specific protocol
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  that enables the individual to control their data to determine who gets to see what when and how
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  their own online activity their posts their content their tracking everything and and bringing
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  that into into your control so that this concept of your social graph which is the the really the
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  most valuable part of a social graph is this um complex network this web of relationships that
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  you've built over time with all your interactions with everybody with every institution with every
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  app right that story is incredibly valuable uh uh use the cell that that's what i use the cell
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  data that this is because from out of that they extract information about who you are what you're
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  likes are what you're dislikes are and that becomes incredibly valuable appetizers so all of
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  that information is hidden it is you we we make the point and this is a um i think one of the most
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  important things we need to start thinking about that that data is rightfully yours on on moral
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  ground so this is actually a human right because individual age where all of our lives are online
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  and all being tracked in this way the distinction between your physical personhood and your digital
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  for all intensive purposes has completely disappeared so the control of that data should
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  rightfully be yours we want people to rise up and demand this because that's the human rights
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  aspects to this thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe
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  button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out
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  the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one