The internet started off as a genuine place for connection between people and small communities, but has now turned into a space for monetized content and viral performances. This shift towards showing off to induce more consumption and content turnover has pushed the genuine online communities to the side.

Yeah.

We've been talking about the sins of the web.

Number three.

I love that we're assuming that the entire web

is Catholic, but let's not

fair enough.

Uh, yeah.

The third sin, let's set up.

I don't know if I'd call it a sin.

I'd call it a, a forgetting our roots.

Oh, okay.

I'm old.

We're a little out of touch.

I went to South by Southwest when the interactive part of

South by Southwest wasn't the biggest deal and wasn't a massive spectacle.

Let me describe South by Southwest to you.

Okay.

It's in Austin, Texas.

Cool city every, yeah, I mean, used to be cool.

Austin used to be weird.

Now it's a city like Capital C

Yes,

It used to be like the college town Plus.

And it was the Oasis in Texas and so on.

So big indie music scene.

South by Southwest is the indie music.

That's how it started.

That's right.

And then they add early days for the web.

They add, uh, interactive, something's happening with technology.

They had Texas instruments down there.

They were

Come on over, come

on over.

Well let, let's bolt a little, some CD rams onto this bad boy and see what

And

it was small.

It was real small.

It was like, you know, web people who, you know, probably now no one even

remembers showing up high fiving each

other.

I mean this is one of those things where the promoter's like, if

this doesn't work out, no biggie, . Yeah,

let's, there seems to be something here and then

fast forward about a decade,

Eclipses

It's one of the weirdest thing.

You've been a couple times.

I've been a couple times.

It's just a very strange event.

You know, you have like people, uh, running around in petty

cabs that are sponsored.

Doritos on behalf of the internet.

Like it's just a lot.

It became big.

Why?

Because a couple of big, a couple of internet startups became big

That's true.

Twitter.

Twitter got a Twitter, like didn't, it didn't launch it South

by Southwest, but it got hu it got big at South by Southwest.

That's when it started to become part of the story.

And so you end up in these vast conference halls with hundreds and

hundreds of people and people like Mark Zuckerberg giving talks that are

Sure.

It became, uh, it became an important, um, event for tech

innovation and Silicon Valley

sort of, it became a marketing orgy.

It it evolved into that.

Yeah.

And so it

and, and you can't get a hotel, et

yeah, it became a mess.

But that's, we're not talking about today's south by, we're talking about.

what

South Bay used to be and how it really was this little community that showed

up in person, which was strange.

So, wait, that's not a sin.

What is.

Well, the sin, and again, sin might be harsh,

Okay.

you know, whatever.

Um, is that, if you look back on how South by started the interactive

side of it, it was really just probably on the order of thousands.

Of voices on the internet.

When I say thousands, I mean people who embrace blogging.

Uh, finally seeing each other in person.

Right?

Let, let, let's say like the entire, there might have been like a million regular

internet users and probably 5,000 of them

Or 10 million, it doesn't even matter.

The publishing part of it, the, the friction and the overhead to publish

went down dramatically through innovations like blogging and, and tools.

Blogging had been around, but you needed to install php then.

people don't, like if you're young, you may not even understand this.

Like you kind of had to build your own blog.

You would get code that doesn't, you'd run it on your server and so on.

So you're, you're looking at.

Let's actually frame, because I think this is important.

Let, let's frame that for one second.

Let's say you wanted to run a really basic weblog on the internet

in the early two thousands.

Mm-hmm.

, Paul Ford: that's 15 hours of

it was, I, I, I'd installed movable type many times.

Yeah.

I'd installed WordPress a bunch of times.

Um, you had to be technical and then, you know, people forget blogger.

Most people who are younger than us don't know what that is.

Blogger really blazed the trail.

For the input box as a way to just absolutely let explosive contribution

happen on the internet in a big way, like it was acquired by Google.

Uh, eventually, Eve Williams, the founder, was also the co-founder of Twitter.

I mean, but that is a pioneering moment in my mind of what was happening and.

And at that point, what hadn't happened yet was the idea of monetizing

and understanding patterns around behavior and seeing how to turn

that into, into advertising yet.

And so it was communities, it was many, many communities.

Right.

It was also incredibly cheap, like it was in in comparison to any

other form of distribution of content.

content.

Yes.

The other thing I think worth mentioning is,

the mechanisms and the incentives around doing it were not around becoming popular.

You'd never assume that this was gonna, there was no such

thing as going viral back then.

It was like, okay, I have an idea about how to like write PHP

better, so I'm gonna write this up.

You did want attention.

You wanted attention, but the mechanisms, the technical mechanisms and

the scoring wasn't in place yet, which

one second I mentioned in the village voice and it

felt like the world had changed.

It's wild.

I realized very early on I was never gonna be like famous.

That was impossible.

Not with the internet.

So when did the sin creep creep in?

Yeah.

When is the

The good news about the sin is it's not our fault as humans.

thank God.

I need one thing that's not my fault.

The, the, the bad news is that it is.

The, the commercialization of the internet, and I'm, I'm an

unapologetic capitalist, right?

Put mechanisms in place that are effectively shunned, smaller circles to

the side in favor of amplifying content.

This

is real, so I, I am an apologetic capitalist

Sure are.

Okay, so.

The giant platforms show up.

Right.

Your Googles, I don't see, and what you're describing looks like a conspiracy, but

having lived through it, it's not, it just, they were just like, oh man, all

those little communities, good for them.

That's good.

But we're gonna make this thing over here that's 50 cents cheaper.

And it's gonna be like, or it'll be really, really easy to publish.

I'm okay with the 22nd dance routine.

I don't mind it.

Um, if that makes you happy and it felt easy to put together.

There are apps and tools that will like automatically edit and put music on

You're talking about like a TikTok.

Even YouTube shorts, uh, Instagram 22nd video.

is anything more naked than YouTube shorts.

When I hear YouTube shorts, I think of a pair of shorts.

It's so bad.

They're just like, okay, fine.

Portrait mode.

Okay, fine, fine here.

This what you want.

I'm okay with that.

I'm, I'm okay with the creation of that content.

Okay.

I think what I struggle with, not that I struggle with it, I have

two little kids and, but I, I'm as guilty as anyone else, right?

Is is that it is designed for, um, quick skimming across lots of people rather than

narrow deep connection with a few people.

can lay this out for you in such a way that we can probably

build our sin right on top of it.

Transactions are what matters to the giant platforms.

so more transactions faster is better.

So more videos, more ad views, more velocity is always better

cuz you get more transactions.

What can you do with a transaction?

Transaction?

I'm writing something to a database.

Yeah, good for me.

But then I can actually get information, although I can sell it to an advertiser

and that drives everything, but it also drives our

behavior and it does something else.

Which is it's, there's a few, and this has been talked about plenty.

There's a few consequences to it.

One is, um,

The, the, the impact level keeps going up to get our attention.

So it either has to be a fight or hilarious.

Or tragic.

Right.

Or

Let me see a couple different strategies.

You see the Instagram post where like a woman is pretending to nurse a cat on an

airplane cuz she knows it will go viral in a like Americans or bananas kind of way.

Correct.

So there's that.

You got that and then you have the, like, no matter what it takes,

I will polish this content until it is flawless and professional.

Uh, and it will cost an unbelievable amount of money to do.

But I want that a.

and so it's just, but there, there are these different paths that people go down.

Outrage, expense.

so all of our bandwidth, Goes to consumption rather than connection.

And why?

Because the platforms are optimized for you to consume

right again and again and again.

And if you don't like it, go to the next one.

And go to the next one.

And go to the next

one.

Oh.

The puzzle of human behavior is if you give people these options, they'll kind

of keep doubling down and you can go over to the side and make YouTube University.

You can make something really good and healthy.

We're only gonna make kale in this channel.

That's right.

But nobody watches.

Well, there's good news.

There's a glimmer of hope.

Paul,

Ah, I like a good glimmer.

Pick just about any specialized corner of knowledge and

look for it on YouTube, and you will find communities, you'll find people

who share information, acknowledging others in the same community.

This is absolutely true.

I've seen it with, since I've seen it with gardening.

I've seen it all over the place, but hold on a minute.

The problem with it.

Is that I need to know about that community to find it, because

YouTube never says, Hey, I plugged you into the algorithm, man.

You look like somebody who could do a little gardening, I

think could help you out here.

YouTube never does that.

The algorithm never says, you know what?

Take a break.

No, it doesn't.

And, and, and the only glimmer of hope you have is that if it

does, watch what you search.

And it's like how to plant cucumbers.

It's like, okay,

Yeah, but without that initial intent.

Without that initial intent,

still not a fan, by the

you know, they give up.

They're just like,

no.

They'll throw you the cucumber.

It's like, look, I'm gonna give you the cucumber video, but do me a favor.

A dozen cats are about to fall off the side of a truck.

Do you know what an incredible bummer it is at YouTube hq.

When somebody gets into gardening, they're just like, ah, man, our,

hit the ceiling

oh, that's $400 an AR poo to nothing.

Q how much The cucumber seeds cost rich

$2, $3.

You are YouTube's worst nightmare.

so I guess, I guess, you know, when we say sin, it sounds like

there's like, there are people to blame.

Okay, rich.

First of all, name The sin

Mainstream viral performance has pushed communities

and deep connections between people to the fringes of the internet.

All right, well, let's, I can give it to showing off is the sin

the, in a way, and I'm okay with people showing

Everybody shows off a little,

Yeah.

But the internet, the thing is, it's such a shrill sound

Oh, it's a lot

to get noticed,

You gotta yell

just say, check out my new button down.

Gotta stomp your foot.

It doesn't work.

. Right.

And so you have to keep dialing it up

All right, so board is about to come out of Vapor Word World.

We're gonna be a real product in a couple months

It really is.

Yes.

We're gonna, we're gonna, that'll change this podcast

quite a bit actually, when we have a real piece of software.

Yeah.

Okay.

So how do we avoid this?

We're not gonna reward popularity.

okay?

We want a million.

Little communities versus five communities with a million eyes on them.

This is real.

So when we, we started with our group wear product and we had an event and

launched it, and then we looked at each other and we thought, this needs to

integrate with more of the web, and we don't want to create huge communities.

They create tremendous drama

That's right.

That's exactly right.

Okay, so are, are we, how do we hold ourselves accountable?

Well, let's make a commitment right here on this podcast, which will

air in March, 2023, that we're gonna not do certain things, We're not gonna ever

sell your behavioral data to anyone else.

Personal

information about you Right?

And

someone may walk up to us and say, you know, I wanna buy you and do

that, and now you can call us out on.

we don't wanna do it.

We can create a business and we can, that's right.

Build a

Platform.

Let's be clear.

That isn't us saying we're never gonna do advertising.

No advertising.

That is ab,

let me make it concrete.

You're into gardening and you Aboard is a data management tool and you

collect a bunch of YouTube videos about

Garden.

They promote some seeds to.

that I know, that I know it's gardening.

I don't say, Hey, you can come over here and get a look at Rich Ziti.

That's right.

My profile is not going back out into the world without me knowing it.

And this is, a lot of this has been talked about, GDPR is about that

Right?

Um, we're not gonna do

Well, we're not, which, which means a lot of patterns, like opting

you into certain subscriptions or things without telling, you know, like, like

if, if people want to give data, they have to know and they have to give you

their permission and they, you have to, you know, and it has to be on them.

You can't just be like, oh, uncheck these 50

People

listening to this may say, well, how are you gonna make money?

There's plenty of ways to make money.

Uh, we're, we haven't figured them out yet.

We've seen like, we've plotted like five that don't include selling

your look.

Let's just not suck.

There's lots of ways to make money without being a horrible marketing machine.

That's right.

All right.

So the sin is too much showing off an a structure that incentivizes performance.

Yes.

And we want a structure that incentivizes community building in a really easy way.

Uh, and the ability to share knowledge.

Connect with others, maybe meet them in person one day.

The idea of a YouTube influencer meeting anyone is only, is viewed as only

through a celebrity lens now, right?

Like there's no like, oh, I'd love to meet the 11 people who

keep commenting on my stuff.

It's always like, I gotta cross a million and then I will go to the

makeup conference and I will sign

and I'm gonna self monetize.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Um, This is gonna, we are, we've been very transparent on this podcast.

This is the Close it out Paul.

Um, we're gonna bob and weave.

We have to, we don't know everything yet.

We can't wait to get this into people's hands so they can tell

us what's working and what isn't.

Um, but there are certain principles I think that drive it.

look, I think that's a good baseline, which is this is a data product.

We're gonna do all kinds of things with data, but we're never

gonna tell anybody who you are

barring a subpoena Right.

Even that, even though we're gonna be careful,

to the Caribbean and dodge the subpoena or

Although those are all real problems, but we don't have 'em

we don't have them yet.

Alright, um, thanks for listening.

Let's go.

More optimistic next episode.

No more sins,

sys, wonderful things about technology.

Yes.

All

All right, uh, you're listening to the, uh, board podcast.

If you've got questions,

hello to board.com.