idk if the normal user should necessarily care about data ownership, but I think the incentive structure it creates would be immediately legible to most people
Did we read the same article? It spends so many words answering these exact questions with examples and helpful illustrations!
Your question:
> why should they care that they don't "own" their Instagram post, whatever that means?
From the article:
> The web Alice created—who she follows, what she likes, what she has posted—is trapped in a box that’s owned by somebody else. To leave it is to leave it behind.
On an individual level, it might not be a huge deal. However, collectively, the net effect is that social platforms—at first, gradually, and then suddenly—turn their backs on their users. If you can’t leave without losing something important, the platform has no incentives to respect you as a user.
Your question:
> can you give examples of good and bad incentive structures in this context?
From the article:
> Maybe the app gets squeezed by investors, and every third post is an ad. Maybe it gets bought by a congolomerate that wanted to get rid of competition, and is now on life support. Maybe it runs out of funding, and your content goes down in two days. Maybe the founders get acquihired—an exciting new chapter. Maybe the app was bought by some guy, and now you’re slowly getting cooked by the algorithm.
> Luckily, web’s decentralized design avoids this. Because it’s easy to walk away, hosting providers are forced to compete, and hosting is now a commodity.
I think you’re right that the average person doesn’t care so much as they just want to be entertained or reach a large network, but apathy is not an argument in favor of the status quo.
In fairness to you, I had originally skimmed the article and did later realize that some of my points had been addressed. In fairness to me, in this subthread I was responding to other commenters and asking them questions rather than commenting directly on the article itself.
At this point my argument is that the ability to switch providers is not a major concern to most users of these platforms. I don't want a generic social media hosting provider. I want the Facebook experience, or the Instagram experience, or the Twitter experience. I'm happy to be in the garden and on the rails because it's easy and tightly curated. I don't want some Frankenstein amalgamation of data from all these things. I don't want to shoehorn my Instagram world into something else.
It’s pithy because the request is pithy- if I have to explain the mechanisms at work here i doubt you’re ever going to buy into the theory at all. A short version is what Dan already said - the entire economic foundation of social media is predicated on high exit costs. ATProto takes substantive steps to lower them. The theory in turn is that new businesses will need to develop less extractive models of viability to survive, which will in turn read legibly to users as less exploitative (you decide your feed, you can switch providers, you can choose moderation layers, etc)
the entire economic foundation of social media is predicated on high exit costs
No I think it's predicated on creating a product that people like to use. That's the Step 1 that OSS zealots miss when they focus entirely on these niche lofty ideals. I highly doubt the average Instagram user is yearning for - or would even be enticed by - a version of that same experience that has a lower exit cost.
That's the problem with these Twitter clones. "It's just like Twitter, but RESPECTS your data ownership" is not compelling. Just create a freaking compelling and original user experience (the actual hard part that made the big platforms successful) and secretly do whatever you want on the back end.
The reason I like Bluesky is that they understand this, and that's why the protocol stuff isn't front and center. They're focused on product first, technology second. The tech serves to create a good product, they don't build the tech first and then hope people find the product acceptable.
There’s nothing compelling and original about the twitter UX compared to all the clones. Pretty much across the board it’s just posting short messages and following others.
The entire value of a social media platform is in the network. Accumulating and maintaining one is the actual hard part that made the big players successful.
It was compelling and original when the concept didn't exist, or at least hadn't been successfully brought to market like they did. In a world where Twitter exists, and has the network, there is nothing compelling about a Twitter clone.
None of these platforms started with a network. They weren't cooked up by evil investors and MBAs looking for a rent-extraction scheme. Nor were they designed by a committee of philosophical experts saying "oh we'll just copy their thing and make it more esoteric and confusing so that maybe one day we can aggregate content from 14 competing Twitter-like platforms and you can switch between them whenever you like!" They were started largely by kids goofing around and making fun things for people.
