I’d Vote for That
The unintended consequences of innovation
The internet is an essential part of our lives. It’s the way our children learn. It’s the way our greatest minds share. And it’s the place where the great experiment of democracy unfolds. But the lifeblood of our internet — information — is dying.
What is the value of the internet if, when a child attempts to use Google to learn, she must wade through pages and pages of ads and e-commerce results before she finds useful information? When she finally gets to what she thinks is real information, what happens when she learns it is false information generated by paid posts, native ads or bots? What does it mean when that same child feels that, to participate in society, she needs to join a social network? One that is in essence a private internet, with private search, private headlines, and private information all under the control of a single corporation?
Every day, the greatest catalog of human information ever created becomes less accessible, less valuable and more tainted. It’s lost in a sea of misinformation, pushed aside by the power of e-commerce, stuffed into the unsearchable dark matter of apps, and locked behind private internet fiefdoms of social networks. What happens to the internet when the information in it becomes meaningless, lost, or is nothing more than paid-for-rhetoric meant to trick us?
How E-Commerce is Killing Information
We’re all familiar with the “head” in relation to Search: the sites that fill the top of the SERPs, dominating the substantial amount of traffic that passes through Search Engines like Google. Those spots are typically occupied by e-commerce sites selling their wares.
The thing is, the “head” has become so large that it leaves organic results so deep in the SERPs that they might as well not exist. Type in “flowers” and the size of the problem becomes clear. The first 20 pages of results are almost all e-commerce results, with only WikiPedia breaking through on the second page. When the first few SERPs are clogged with items that are only tangentially related to the user’s query, they cast a gigantic shadow over high-quality content. This “Giant Head” reduces the value of Search for consumers and are no longer able to find relevant results to their questions.
How Apps are Killing Information
Apps have become essential to our modern way of life. But because of the way they are built and their separation from the web, the information inside them is not searchable. Left unchecked, this “Dark Matter” could eclipse discoverable information. That would not only destroy Google’s Search, it could take the world’s information and lock it away inside private servers behind the wall of compiled code.
The pressure to create apps is strong — after all, Americans are spending 50% of their total connected time in apps. That means that half of American internet use is contributing to the creation of Dark Matter. Half of our time on the internet is spent sending our information into oblivion, absquatulating, never to return.
How Social Networks are Killing Information
Social Networks are the most trafficked platforms on the web. Their users contribute an enormous amount to the yottabytes of data being generated on the web. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Imgur, Reddit — these social networks are central to the lives of nearly 80% of Americans, and 3 of every 10 humans on Earth. What’s alarming is that there are serious indications that we are at a tipping point in the public versus the private internet. In 2016, Facebook’s revenue grow a stunning 160% year over year, while Google’s Search revenue saw its first ever decline in revenues in history.
Each of these social platforms is a potential private fiefdom. At the moment, for instance, Facebook is searchable. But Mark Zuckerberg could turn off that capability, transforming an enormous portion of the web to opaque Dark Matter. What makes that possibility particularly frightening is that the information that would vanish was generated by individual citizens. He’d be taking away the ability for individuals to search through their own content outside of his platform. You might think it’s ridiculous argument, but when you consider Facebook’s proposal where they offered India controversial free-but-Facebook-restricted version of the internet, it’s not so far fetched to think Facebook could become a second, private internet.
What Can We Do?
The knee-jerk reaction for many will be to declare war on social networks, search, and apps, but that’s not a realistic solution. Capitalism and companies are not the enemy, they are our power. Google, Facebook and other industry leaders can, and should, be part of the solution. We love our apps and social networks, and there’s nothing wrong with us loving them. Companies need to make money, and there’s nothing wrong with them doing that either. The right solution is one in which we are able to enjoy our apps, posts and tweets, one in which companies can grow, hire people and succeed, all while protecting the world’s information.
The right solution is one in which we all participate.
- Imagine a world where Twitter was free of bots, trolls and bullies. #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where Google brought back “don’t be evil and made even more money because of it.” #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where tech giants adopted “don’t be evil” and created a new era of corporate responsibility. #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where Facebook made active and decisive decisions to eliminate false information. #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where social media companies banned accounts that used hashtag bot seeds like #follow4follow. #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where the Silicon Valley produced a startup that rid the world of trolls, spammers and bullies. #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where companies could stay profitable without the trickery of native ads, paid posts, and false information. #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where beautiful, searchable web apps freed the information being trapped in the dark matter of native apps. #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where the internet, social media, and our favorite apps were the heart of protecting an informed populace. #idvoteforthat
- Imagine a world where a little girl searches for “flowers” and finds exactly what she needs for her school project. #idvoteforthat
