---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Quora <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 10:15 AM Subject: New answer to "Are social networks the new platforms for social activism?" To: [email protected] [image: Quora]New answer to "Are social networks the new platforms for social activism?" *William Carleton*: The answer to this question will depend, ultimately, on the interests that those in charge of social networks choose to serve. If choices in design and development are made to maintain the commercial interests advertisers have in targeting messages to consumers, then, no, social networks will be no better for social activism than any other means of communication. Said another way: if put into the service of advertising, then social networks will become a tool that can be used effectively, or not, by people who are otherwise motivated to be socially active. If social networks are a trick, a bait and switch, a way to expose users to advertisers and direct marketers, then social networks will end up being indifferent, able to serve good causes and repressive governments alike. If, on the other hand, choices in design and development are relentlessly made to privilege a user's access to relevant, uncensored, unsponsored information, even at the expense of advertisers who would prefer to control what is known and said on all media, then, yes, social networks can become a platform for social activism of a qualitatively far higher order. If this happens, then social networks become something far greater than just another means of communication. Social networks then become exponentially more powerful means to share, sift and analyze information than any known analog platforms. Today's leading social networks show a lack of ambition and an unimaginative willingness to resuscitate 20th Century business models that might well otherwise be exhausted by now. So it will be up to others to displace today's leaders in social networking, or to end run them, if social networking is going to actually improve the human condition. Quora is a promising candidate (in part, no doubt, because it is so new and not yet committed to a revenue model). If it stays open and permits itself and others to iterate relentlessly on ways to gather and syndicate real time information, it could be part of the more ambitious of the two paradigms, the one that has social networks destroying advertising altogether. Speaking now to those who found social networks: IMHO the place to start is to honor authentic speech and to put the technology to the service of natural persons. If you can afford to never make design or business choices that compromise on those principles, you could do something relevant for the world. *To see the question page with all answers, visit: http://www.quora.com/l/0kYrHJPr* Thanks, The Quora Team We sent you this email because you are following this question. To stop following it, click this link: http://www.quora.com/l/vYra69Ll/_STOP_FOLLOWING To control which emails we send you, visit: http://www.quora.com/l/e290RQsI This email was sent by Quora, a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. To disable all email from Quora, visit the following link: http://www.quora.com/l/K3HE3bvA -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI