Social Protocols a Quarter of Century Later
Something like a quarter of century ago, in September of 1997 to be precise, was given a speech by J. Realge Jr. at the Telecommunications and Policy Research Conference (the link doesn’t work anymore). The title of the speech was “Designing a Social Protocol:
Lessons Learned from the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project”. This work is worth reading for because it is a testimony of what were the discussions about free speech and internet issues, to say it loosely, back in an era where internet was mostly an academic thing. In 1997 the impact of internet on everyday life was yet to come and smartphones only existed in, good, science fiction novels. Fast forward to 2024, two days ago the CEO of Telegram was arrested in France. The charges are very broad and non specific, basically he was accused of being an accomplice in various affairs. I have nothing for or against Durov. In his interview with T. Carlson he sounds like an individual very savvy in selling his own brand, but nothing more or less remarkable than any other tech CEO. This is the last event in the never ending list on what can only be described as a global crackdown on free speech in the west. The Mark Zuckerberg letter is also worth reading: in this letter he claims that the White House did put pressure on him to ban speech. It is as anti 1st amendment as you can go: no need for the supreme court to debate on this for weeks.
What can we learn of the recent history of speech control in nations nominally attached to free speech ? This post is a follow up to my januray 2021 post on the fact that we were reaching the Samizdat point.
Lessons of the Biden Administration
What have we learned since January 2021 regarding free speech issues? The first lesson is that all the questions about shadowbanning and the control of social media by the executive branch are now settled. The aforementioned Zukerberg’s letter is just another data point —the Twitter Files is a larger piece of data that includes Z. remarks—. The crazy ones were not the ones seeing a conspiracy there. This 2022 Slate article is interesting to read in retrospect. Who fact check the fact checkers ? Time will do.
The second thing that we learned is that whatever the commitment of a CEO it is very hard to resist the coalition of nation states deep administration pressure. Even if Elon is very vocal, X platform has been under attack by Brazilian judge, European Commissionars etc. One point to bear in mind: it looks like that Durov received an invitation for a dinner with Emmanuel Macron, and that would be the reason why he landed in France:
Here is a link to a translation of this article published in “Le Canard Enchainé”. Like in the Epstein case, the most probable is that we will never have the final word on this affair. In facts instead of an answer there will be 179 different answers. Each of them will be published via a different media, for different audiences…
So the second lesson is : no company is going to make it. Every company has a CEO that can be threatened with jail time. Every platform has to have servers somewhere where a police raid is possible. Wherever the company is registered, there is a local version of the IRS, etc. The Facebook case is especially important: it happened in a country where the free speech has been more religiously observed than on any country on earth. Yet the political power has a terrific track record over the last few years.
The third lesson is more subtle. Actually administrations only act on statistically relevant events. They don’t really care if you don’t have a lot of traction. They are practical in this, they can’t follow every internet users, but also they are limited by their essence. They can’t operate on things not seen. We have an advantage here because feeling the vibe shifting is available to individuals. The bad news is that statistical data are more and more precise. Smartphones are everywhere collecting data on you. It is easier than ever to detect low volume signals. But the lesson remain: if you can stay long enough under the statistical radar you have a chance to beat Goliath. The idea would be to plant seeds everywhere so that they all hatch at the same time. When a phenomenon is large enough they usually, at least until now, back down. Replay the COVID crisis to have good testimonies on this.
Towards a Social Media Protocol
I am convinced for quite some time now that short of a social media protocol widely used there will be no way to win the free speech wars against the powers that be. For instance there is still free speech in emails. This is because emails are based on a protocol (SMTP). There is no CEO, no data centers or company to tax to oblivion. Anyone can set up an email server in an afternoon (actually it is becoming more and more difficult and large players like Google play an increasing role in that). What is needed is an equivalent for social media communications.
What are the differences between a social media protocol and a mail protocol ? After all the idea looks very similar : you send messages to recipients in both cases. The fact that those messages are text, videos or images doesn’t change anything at the protocol level. A first difference is that when you send an email you know to who it is primarily sent. Compare with social media like X: you have no control on who is going to read your post. It is like an open letter to the world. Of course you can make circles of friends, channels like in Telegram etc. But there is this difference : a post on a social media is not, a priori, destined to a single recipient. The degree to which the post is public can be tuned but the default assumption is the dual from the one for an email. An email is supposed to be private: the data belongs to the recipient. In a social media the data belongs to no one and everyone. In this respect a social media post appears as an open letter to the world. Now the legitimate follow up question is: how does it differ from a standard html webpage ? After all a html page on a web server can also be seen as an open letter to the internet world. The major difference is that in social media : who published the post and when it was published are as important as the content of the post itself. When you consult a wikipedia page on the diameter of the hydrogen atom, you don’t care the who and the when. What is important is the content of the wikipedia page: is it correct or not. Compare with social media post. Take the example of Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 USA presidential race. It was done by a social media post just a month ago:
The content of the letter could be summed up with: “I am withdrawing from the presidential race”. But the important poins are: is he really the one who published it ? and when was it published ? For the first point it is anyone’s guess because of the second point: it was published in the wake of the infamous debate. It became impossible to hide anylonger the mental decline of the president in charge. So has he teh mental clarity to produce such a post ?
The who and the when are not handled by http protocol and html documents. Web technologies have focussed on the what. These are the points to focus to develop a social media protocol. There are many solutions and inspiring ideas in the Crypto toolkit. But the main question is: does the western world want to build the equivalent of free speech for a digital culture ? As I discussed there are political implications to consider as well. Right now we have a chicken and egg situation to solve: we, the resistance to the written culture institutions power grabs, have to synchronize using today’s internet tools in order to build tomorrow’s institutions.
