{"id":1070,"date":"2019-11-18T01:02:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T01:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/achangeiscoming.net\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2024-01-20T05:14:56","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T05:14:56","slug":"wt-social-intellectual-dark-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2019\/11\/18\/wt-social-intellectual-dark-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is \u201cintellectual dark web\u201d content at the top of my feed? Thoughts on WT:Social"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"WT:Social<\/a><\/p>\n

On Friday, I signed up for WT:Social, a news focused social network from Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame<\/a>.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of buzz about WT:Social, and membership is soaring \u2014 up from just a few thousand users at the beginning of the month to almost 100,000 when I signed up two days ago.\u00a0 The waitlist is long, but if you get a paid account ($12.99\/month or $100\/year) you can skip the queue.<\/p>\n

Since I’m also working on some news focused social network software, and so am interested to see how others approach the problem, I paid for a month.\u00a0 If you’re also developing social media software, there’s a lot to learn here, so it might be worth it for you as well.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, save your money. [1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Red flags from the beginning<\/h1>\n

There were some red flags from the beginning, starting with the lack of up-front information about a code of conduct, anti-harassment policy, or content guidelines.\u00a0 As Elisa Camhort Page said when we were discussing this<\/p>\n

A site that welcomes any content is inevitably a site that welcomes harassment, hate speech, threats, and misinformation. You cannot stave off one if you will not take a stand on the other.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah really.\u00a0 Eventually I discovered that the Terms and Conditions<\/a> actually does link out to a Code of Conduct<\/a>, as well as FAQs on\u00a0Diversity<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ethics;<\/a> from the dates on them, they seem to have been written for WT:Social’s previous incarnation as WikiTribune, but presumably they still apply.\u00a0 Still, most people won’t invest the effort to find these, and so won’t know what’s expected of them.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s much better to make sure that people see these right up front — and explicitly agree to them.<\/p>\n

Another immediately-obvious problem: the experience using a screen reader is really horrible.\u00a0 There’s no “skip navigation” link, so the initial experience on the page starts with reading out all the menus and recommended sub-wikis.\u00a0 Then when you finally get to a link, the title of the article is repeated multiple times, and it reads out the complete URL.\u00a0 Yikes.<\/p>\n

Also, it doesn’t seem like WT:Social has really thought through about how people might try to game the system, let alone applied structured techniques like “social threat modeling<\/a>” [2]<\/a>\u00a0 For example, the notifications are all on by default — meaning new posts get sent to you via email\u00a0\u00a0 What could possibly go wrong?\u00a0 Here’s a screenshot of some email I got (with the subwiki’s name blanked out).<\/p>\n

\"Email<\/p>\n

In this particular case it was an accident [3]<\/a> but you can certainly see how it could get abused.\u00a0 Mechanisms like this make it open season for spammers, harassers, propagandists, and other unsavory types.<\/p>\n

If you have an account there, you can turn the notifications off by going to “My Account” and then “Edit Notifications”.\u00a0 The link https:\/\/wt.social\/myaccount\/notifications<\/a> also works, at least for now … although, as Kathy Gill points out, the way the notification dialog uses red and green is problematic from an accessibility perspective<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s what the initial settings look like via Coblis<\/a>, the color blindness simulator.\u00a0 Are they on or off?<\/p>\n

\"Notifications<\/a><\/p>\n

Even though I’ve turned all the notifications off, I still see some when I check the site.\u00a0 Still, it’s a lot better than it was — and things aren’t showing up in my email.<\/p>\n

It’s more like reddit than Facebook<\/h1>\n

Even though a lot of people are describing WT:Social as an alternative to Faecebook, it’s really a lot more like reddit.\u00a0 Links get organized into “subwikis”, which fill a similar role to reddit’s “subreddits”.\u00a0 You can browse a subwiki, comment on posts there, or join it (which lets you submit links of your own).<\/p>\n

The word “subwiki” doesn’t seem like a great choice to me.\u00a0 Subwiki’s aren’t wikis, and they aren’t part of a wiki.\u00a0 In my own informal survey nobody found it a particularly appealing name.\u00a0 But, it probably sounded good to Jimmy Wales and the people he hangs out with.<\/p>\n

Your home page is a “feed” of the most recent posts, along with the most recent comments, from any of the subwikis that you’ve joined.\u00a0 There are also some “global links” that the people running the site decide everybody gets to see (no way to opt out yet, sorry, and no information about how they decide on which links to send out).\u00a0\u00a0 There’s also the additional twist of collaborative wiki-like editing of posts, although I haven’t been able to get it to work yet. [4]<\/a><\/p>\n

It mostly works.\u00a0 I was able to figure out how to make a post and share a link myself (although I had to hit refresh to see whether it had succeeded or not).\u00a0\u00a0 I like exploring new social networks, so I hunted around found the FAQ<\/a> and Known Bugs<\/a> list. [5]<\/a>\u00a0 Putting my civil liberties hat on, I created the Section 215 subwiki<\/a> to share links about the upcoming USA FREEDOM Act reauthorization battle, and seeded it with a post.\u00a0 Then I sent invitation links to a couple of friends.<\/p>\n

This was, in retrospect, a mistake.\u00a0 My apologies.\u00a0 If you’ve also signed up, and are considering inviting other people, please read this footnote first.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

How I spent my Friday evening<\/h1>\n

A few hours later one of the friends I had sent an invitation link to asked me<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is there an article from Quillette at the top of my WT:Social feed?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good question. I went back to check WT:social again and there was an article from Quillette at the top of my feed as well. WTF?<\/p>\n

For those of you who don\u2019t know Quillette, it’s an online magazine usually described a a part of the \u201cIntellectual Dark Web<\/a>\u201d (IDW), which also includes other prominent members like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Jonathan Haidt.\u00a0 Like others in the IDW, Quillette is polarizing.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 Some people see it as upholding values of free speech against the onslaught of SJWs and snowflakes. Others see it as \u2026 not the kind of content they want to be confronted with unexpectedly on a Friday night.<\/p>\n

Most of my friends fall into the second category, so I hurriedly circled back to the people I had shared invitations with and let them know that they might be in for an unpleasant surprise if they signed up.\u00a0 Then I looked to see what was going on.<\/p>\n

Before we go into that, though, think for a moment about the effect this is likely to have on WT:Social. Lots of people are looking for alternatives to Facebook et al. When somebody like my friend goes to check out a new site and the first thing they see is IDW content \u2026 they\u2019re likely to leave, and not come back.<\/p>\n

And people who hear about this and don’t want to deal with IDW content might not even bother to check WT:Social out.\u00a0 When I’ve told other friends that if the sign up for Jimmy Wales’ new social network they they might well see IDW content at the top of their feed, their reaction is generally that they’ve got better things to do with their time.<\/p>\n

Then again, there are plenty of people out there who actively like IDW content. They\u2019re ones who are likely to stick around, and invite their friends.\u00a0 By placing this content so prominently, WT:Social is going to attract them \u2014 and drive away the people like me and most of my friends, who would rather not be confronted with IDW content on a Friday night.\u00a0\u00a0 This seems like good news for IDW fans who feel like they’re being oppressed by Facebook, Twitter, and reddit.\u00a0 But as we’ll see, even for them, there are downsides.<\/p>\n

Why should IDW fans have all the fun?<\/h1>\n

Once I looked into it, I realized that what had happened to my friend was fairly straightforward:<\/p>\n