And for His Next Act, Ev Williams Will Fix the Internet(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
And for His Next Act, Ev Williams Will Fix the Internet
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/business/ev-williams-twitter-medium.html
17 comments
I don't think that's the most charitable reading of his statement—he's not saying that he personally, or any company he has control over is offering people that "choice." He's saying that in any market there will always be bad actors, so you also need to protect yourself.
An analogy: you won't ever be able to stop all potential muggers. You can choose not to be a mugger, tell everyone you know not to assault and rob anybody, make PR campaigns about it, teach it in schools, create social programs to ensure people aren't poor enough to need to rob anybody, etc. But, no matter what you do, there are still going to be some people who choose to mug people anyway. Pretending you can 100% solve mugging through outreach to the muggers is just ignoring reality and leaving people vulnerable. You have to approach the problem from both ends: decreasing the number of muggers, but also teaching people self-defence so they're less vulnerable to whatever amount of mugging might still happen.
(In the interests of avoiding politicizing the discussion, please do not reference the other assault crime that people usually argue about. Mugging works well-enough.)
An analogy: you won't ever be able to stop all potential muggers. You can choose not to be a mugger, tell everyone you know not to assault and rob anybody, make PR campaigns about it, teach it in schools, create social programs to ensure people aren't poor enough to need to rob anybody, etc. But, no matter what you do, there are still going to be some people who choose to mug people anyway. Pretending you can 100% solve mugging through outreach to the muggers is just ignoring reality and leaving people vulnerable. You have to approach the problem from both ends: decreasing the number of muggers, but also teaching people self-defence so they're less vulnerable to whatever amount of mugging might still happen.
(In the interests of avoiding politicizing the discussion, please do not reference the other assault crime that people usually argue about. Mugging works well-enough.)
It is exactly in the cigarette sense as both affect the brain through the same dopamine machinery. And personally as a former heavy smoker I don't feel any difference between urge for the next cigarette and the urge to check email, HN comments/responses, etc.
This makes me think that we know what the effects of cigarettes are; how long will it be until we see the effects of social media addiction?
cough Brexit cough
cough Trump cough
cough Flat-earth conspiracies getting semi-mainstream airplay cough
Whilst that's unfairly flippant, it's too deep and complex to attribute anything specific to social media addiction because it's just a magnification of existing human behaviours.
Normalisation of behaviours on a 'global village' scale. But that's not limited to social media, that's "The Internet" allowing for relatively instant cross-global idea sharing (and included in 'ideas' are stupid things like product-unwrapping videos, video-game streaming with commentary, music, and all the other base shit that people seem to like only because other people seem to like it).
Whilst that's unfairly flippant, it's too deep and complex to attribute anything specific to social media addiction because it's just a magnification of existing human behaviours.
Normalisation of behaviours on a 'global village' scale. But that's not limited to social media, that's "The Internet" allowing for relatively instant cross-global idea sharing (and included in 'ideas' are stupid things like product-unwrapping videos, video-game streaming with commentary, music, and all the other base shit that people seem to like only because other people seem to like it).
Most problems are optional ones. Lots of little choices that add up.
Shaping those choices is a worthwhile discussion - how can we encourage people have healthier diets to trade some short term indulgence for fewer long term health problems, say - but if you see someone who's making money as a result of people still making the short-term choice, and they're talking about "it has to be up to the user," then yeah, they're probably being dangerously naive or (probably) worse.
Shaping those choices is a worthwhile discussion - how can we encourage people have healthier diets to trade some short term indulgence for fewer long term health problems, say - but if you see someone who's making money as a result of people still making the short-term choice, and they're talking about "it has to be up to the user," then yeah, they're probably being dangerously naive or (probably) worse.
You can't make big money on the Internet by being honest.
Or anywhere else for that matter.
Even the most honest people that make big money, just relegate the non-honest part to other people.
A product company executive will relegate it to advertisers and marketeers to brain wash people with his products, honesty be damned.
A musician will leverage the culturally bad copyright system to get their royalties.
A clothes designer will outsource to cheap laborers, including children, in developing countries, treated like shit and paid the minimum they could get away with.
Even the most honest people that make big money, just relegate the non-honest part to other people.
A product company executive will relegate it to advertisers and marketeers to brain wash people with his products, honesty be damned.
A musician will leverage the culturally bad copyright system to get their royalties.
A clothes designer will outsource to cheap laborers, including children, in developing countries, treated like shit and paid the minimum they could get away with.
Optimistically I'd like to think you can but there's always more to be made if you're not.
We have 25 years of .com history to reflect upon, surely there should be some obvious examples by now.
If people's attention is land, than Facebook pulled off the largest land grab in history.
Facebook's value is derived from user attention thus it has literally zero incentive to make it less addictive.
User's will never have a choice in the matter because it's impossible to add more time in the day.
Facebook's value is derived from user attention thus it has literally zero incentive to make it less addictive.
User's will never have a choice in the matter because it's impossible to add more time in the day.
Not to mention they used to run ads telling people how healthy cigarettes are for you.
Meanwhile social media companies tell you how great it is to "engage with your friends and family as much as humanly possible" on their platforms.
Meanwhile social media companies tell you how great it is to "engage with your friends and family as much as humanly possible" on their platforms.
Oh, now he's fixing it, not salvaging it?
May last year in NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams-...
May last year in NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams-...
Ev Williams is one of the great entrepreneural scammer of our time. He is gifted master of bootstrapping same old run of the mill blogging web sites slapped with ultra-gradios vision and then sell it to deep pocketed buyers while leaving his user base high and dry. His tech is almost always subpar, ideas half backed, business model broken but he gets billions anyway for his ability to generate massive followers out of thin air. I suppose Medium is up for sale. The idea of paid premium content has been tried so many times... Someone needs to make a case study of how he does bootstrapping.
He must have changed PR firms.
Yeah my exact sense when I saw this. Is this a yearly thing?
I had to do it: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
"Fix"? With Medium? They replace free blogs with a site where you have to pay to read them.
People like you helping people like us help themselves.
People like you helping people like us help themselves.
Not to mention Medium is a centralised solution, or how it's perfectly willing to screw over people and publications at seemingly random:
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/medium-abruptly-cancels-the...
If that's fixing the internet, I'm not sure I want to know what breaking it would be.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/medium-abruptly-cancels-the...
If that's fixing the internet, I'm not sure I want to know what breaking it would be.
Not to mention Medium is reader hostile with all the stuff they put on the screen.
Since I started using the Web Annoyances Ultralist[1], sites like medium blogs became extremely minimalist. I recommend it
[1] https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances
[1] https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances
Firefox Reader View works well for me.
It's worth noting that this profile was published at about the same time Medium started cutting off publisher memberships: http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/medium-abruptly-cancels-the...
The NYTimes author's response: https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/994634637451415601
> Gotten a lot of smart criticism since this piece ran. Agree that @ev’s grand plans should be evaluated in light of Medium’s history of sudden strategy shifts and the writers/publishers who get hurt by them.
The NYTimes author's response: https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/994634637451415601
> Gotten a lot of smart criticism since this piece ran. Agree that @ev’s grand plans should be evaluated in light of Medium’s history of sudden strategy shifts and the writers/publishers who get hurt by them.
>As a co-founder of Blogger and Twitter and, more recently, as the chief executive of the digital publishing platform Medium, Mr. Williams transformed the way millions of people publish and consume information online.
>But as his empire grew, he started to get a gnawing feeling that something wasn’t right. High-quality publishers were losing out to sketchy clickbait factories.
How anyone can write these three sentences in that order without their head exploding from irony is beyond me. Medium is just Upworthy with a shave and a breath mint.
>But as his empire grew, he started to get a gnawing feeling that something wasn’t right. High-quality publishers were losing out to sketchy clickbait factories.
How anyone can write these three sentences in that order without their head exploding from irony is beyond me. Medium is just Upworthy with a shave and a breath mint.
Not an irony
Seems a perfect example of modern media...
Seems a perfect example of modern media...
Like many tech executives, Ev's view is that it's up to users to demand more from social media algorithms and tech products:
> But he is not convinced that the problems with social platforms can ever be fully solved, nor does he believe it's entirely incumbent upon tech companies to solve them. ... [It] will be up to users to choose, and stick to, their own information diets.
This echoes FB's VP of Ads, Rob Goldman, who blamed lack of media literacy and Benedict Evans at a16z, who argued that engagement must be king at FB.* To me, this feels remarkably self serving.
Regardless, I made an engineer media literacy guide to encourage a shift in user behavior, and contributions are welcome:
https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer
-------------------------------------------------
* https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964680128092504065
* https://www.nemil.com/s/benedict-evans.html (my response to Benedict Evan's post)
> But he is not convinced that the problems with social platforms can ever be fully solved, nor does he believe it's entirely incumbent upon tech companies to solve them. ... [It] will be up to users to choose, and stick to, their own information diets.
This echoes FB's VP of Ads, Rob Goldman, who blamed lack of media literacy and Benedict Evans at a16z, who argued that engagement must be king at FB.* To me, this feels remarkably self serving.
Regardless, I made an engineer media literacy guide to encourage a shift in user behavior, and contributions are welcome:
https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer
-------------------------------------------------
* https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964680128092504065
* https://www.nemil.com/s/benedict-evans.html (my response to Benedict Evan's post)
Theres an interview (iirc) with him in Tim Ferris's Tribe of Mentors. He said something that stuck with me, that made me think slightly less of him.
I'm trying to recall from memory here since the book isn't in front of me.
He's talking about selling his first company, its all about making hard choices and such. The company is dying so he had two options either sell the company now (for a smaller amount) or fire most of the staff and sell later. He mentions how he had to let go of the staff but later sold it for a larger amount of money. He then says something to the degree of considering it a "win".
I don't know that I consider laying off a ton of people for a greater exit a win. I consider it a move to get more money, but I doubt anyone chasing money is going to "fix the internet".
I'm trying to recall from memory here since the book isn't in front of me.
He's talking about selling his first company, its all about making hard choices and such. The company is dying so he had two options either sell the company now (for a smaller amount) or fire most of the staff and sell later. He mentions how he had to let go of the staff but later sold it for a larger amount of money. He then says something to the degree of considering it a "win".
I don't know that I consider laying off a ton of people for a greater exit a win. I consider it a move to get more money, but I doubt anyone chasing money is going to "fix the internet".
Probably worth noting that Blogger went on to become one of the top ten most trafficked web sites on the Internet. So I'm sure he considered that part of what he meant by win.
Also, this idea of small amount now or large amount later doesn't quite make sense. My understanding is that Google didn't pay that much for it (as measured by Google's stock price at the time). A lot of times when a founder says they have a small offer they mean "returns 10% of the investors money and employees half of the team at 80% of what they could make if they just went out an got jobs on their own. So as I read between the lines, that small offer was probably easy to walk away from under any conditions.
Also, this idea of small amount now or large amount later doesn't quite make sense. My understanding is that Google didn't pay that much for it (as measured by Google's stock price at the time). A lot of times when a founder says they have a small offer they mean "returns 10% of the investors money and employees half of the team at 80% of what they could make if they just went out an got jobs on their own. So as I read between the lines, that small offer was probably easy to walk away from under any conditions.
The interview was very short, numbers would have definitely helped. I agree there could definitely be a circumstance where it could possibly be better for the employees to leave.
Business is business, it's not personal. What should concern you is his attitude in thinking that he knows best for everyone. He's created a lot of toxic environments, most notably Twitter, that would go a long way in cleaning up the internet.
"Business is business, it's not personal."
OK, Laurie Bream...
Culturally, thankfully, it seems the negative outcomes from this attitude are on display right now. Mainstream life is very partitioned, dissociated, maybe. I think of my parents who can't stand BLM protests at football games because "there's no place for politics at work." #metoo is somehow related here, too.
The walls are coming down; I believe we need to take a more holistic approach to life to truly survive, succeed, and thrive. I'm sorry if this sounds a little scattered to the more thinking-oriented type, as I'm more of a feeling/intuitive personality myself.
OK, Laurie Bream...
Culturally, thankfully, it seems the negative outcomes from this attitude are on display right now. Mainstream life is very partitioned, dissociated, maybe. I think of my parents who can't stand BLM protests at football games because "there's no place for politics at work." #metoo is somehow related here, too.
The walls are coming down; I believe we need to take a more holistic approach to life to truly survive, succeed, and thrive. I'm sorry if this sounds a little scattered to the more thinking-oriented type, as I'm more of a feeling/intuitive personality myself.
I'm explaining this to myself as much as anyone else, but the end-result of "Business is business, it's not personal." is AI / Machines continuing the business at the expense of all human employees resulting in massively efficient business and corporations that slowly congeal into a single mega-corporation that does all products end-to-end, and then attempting to sell these products to the humans who no longer have any money because none of them have any work to earn it.
Heyyyy, it's just Business. Capiche?
Heyyyy, it's just Business. Capiche?
"Business is business, it's not personal" said the gang enforcer before cutting a finger off someone who was late paying their protection money.
"Business is business, it's not personal". And that's part of the problem.
"Business is business, it's not personal". And that's part of the problem.
I haven’t read the book, but that sounds like the Blogger story and his staff walked out on him because they thought the business was doomed, which it probably would have been if it hadn’t shrunk down to just Evan Williams.
Interesting, if thats the case, I wish he would have clarified, because thats very different. The interview made it seem condescending.
Agreed. I am having a terrible time finding a better source, but the WP article provides a good summary and it was Ev’s first company that he sold. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyra_Labs
I could believe that he is putting a spin on it now since not paying people and expecting them to stay on is less than ideal employee treatment.
I could believe that he is putting a spin on it now since not paying people and expecting them to stay on is less than ideal employee treatment.
Why don't he fix medium or twitter first? This guy talks a lot.
Twitter is kind of amazing as an example of something that was never fixed and never will be fixed [0], yet has managed to survive for many years.
[0] e.g. the problems with harassment that existed in the first year still exist and indeed have never been curtailed in any way...
[0] e.g. the problems with harassment that existed in the first year still exist and indeed have never been curtailed in any way...
This article rings hollow with how Medium has slipped down in to the pit of unending, user-hostile A/B tests meant to increase "engagement" and sign ups. I absolutely hate medium now.
Each time I end up on one of the medium-based articles I get dizzy - I get bombarded with full-screen nag screen and after closing it roughly 1/3-1/2 of the screen is hidden behind fixed navbar (often) and another nag-bar to sign-up.
Really - I do miss old days where blogs/articles were, to put it weirdly "simplistic" (tech-wise)
Really - I do miss old days where blogs/articles were, to put it weirdly "simplistic" (tech-wise)
> High-quality publishers were losing out to sketchy clickbait factories. Users were spending tons of time on social media, but they weren’t necessarily happier or better informed. Platforms built to empower the masses were rewarding extremists and attention seekers instead.
In order to believe that technology will solve the problem, you have to also believe that technology is the problem. It's not, though. We are the problem.
We were already extremists and attention seekers. Social media just amplified that. Any platform, no matter how set up, will be gamed to take advantage of human nature.
In order to believe that technology will solve the problem, you have to also believe that technology is the problem. It's not, though. We are the problem.
We were already extremists and attention seekers. Social media just amplified that. Any platform, no matter how set up, will be gamed to take advantage of human nature.
Ev Williams personal paid PR piece aside, it is actually possible to solve the problem: have it done by large company as in “free parking” model.
This highlights the dangers of booking your future on the back of another company. Enthusiasm for partnerships comes and goes.
Could it be that Ev’s best moments are behind him?
Could it be that Ev’s best moments are behind him?
"It [technology] creates feedback loops that can fundamentally change the nature of how people interact and societies move (in ways that probably none of us predicted)."
1) Marxists have been writing about this for decades...
2) Ev Williams seems to think that moving (back) to a subscription model is the right move. It's not, and it's kind of an archaic model (even though it's still widely used). I'd argue the best business model for authors and content creators at this point in time is the Twitch model. While it shares similarities to a traditional subscription model, it goes above and beyond that. The biggest difference is that a subscription is optional though is incentivized through other means (ie: access to a creator's Discord server, custom emojis, merch giveaways, etc). There is no barrier for access to content. Users get to opt in to financially supporting creators, but are not required to. It combines the best of both an ad-based model and a subscription model by allowing ads on free content and removing them for subscribers.
This is similar to YouTube Red, but I think where YouTube went wrong is that a subscription is for the whole platform, not for specific creators. Many would rather individually support the creators that they enjoy and not support the one they dislike (which is why many creators on YouTube get financial support from consumers through other platforms such as Patreon, tours, MAGs, and merchandise sales).
3) Look at how other companies are changing their business models and the way they publish content and how it affects the way they are perceived. You have networks like Viceland that started out posting a bunch of web series on YouTube and then they decided to try being a cable network and in the process alienated a large number of their viewer base. They are becoming perceived as a network for millennials run by your grandparents. Myself and many others that I know used to watch many of their web series, but now don't because we don't want to pay for a cable subscription just to watch a few shows on a single network. At the same time, you have traditional cable networks posting clips and sometimes full episodes of their shows on YouTube making a cable subscription even less exclusive or valuable. Lastly, you have other services that allow users to illegally stream copyrighted material for free. These services wouldn't exist if there wasn't a barrier to entry from the source of the content they are streaming.
1) Marxists have been writing about this for decades...
2) Ev Williams seems to think that moving (back) to a subscription model is the right move. It's not, and it's kind of an archaic model (even though it's still widely used). I'd argue the best business model for authors and content creators at this point in time is the Twitch model. While it shares similarities to a traditional subscription model, it goes above and beyond that. The biggest difference is that a subscription is optional though is incentivized through other means (ie: access to a creator's Discord server, custom emojis, merch giveaways, etc). There is no barrier for access to content. Users get to opt in to financially supporting creators, but are not required to. It combines the best of both an ad-based model and a subscription model by allowing ads on free content and removing them for subscribers.
This is similar to YouTube Red, but I think where YouTube went wrong is that a subscription is for the whole platform, not for specific creators. Many would rather individually support the creators that they enjoy and not support the one they dislike (which is why many creators on YouTube get financial support from consumers through other platforms such as Patreon, tours, MAGs, and merchandise sales).
3) Look at how other companies are changing their business models and the way they publish content and how it affects the way they are perceived. You have networks like Viceland that started out posting a bunch of web series on YouTube and then they decided to try being a cable network and in the process alienated a large number of their viewer base. They are becoming perceived as a network for millennials run by your grandparents. Myself and many others that I know used to watch many of their web series, but now don't because we don't want to pay for a cable subscription just to watch a few shows on a single network. At the same time, you have traditional cable networks posting clips and sometimes full episodes of their shows on YouTube making a cable subscription even less exclusive or valuable. Lastly, you have other services that allow users to illegally stream copyrighted material for free. These services wouldn't exist if there wasn't a barrier to entry from the source of the content they are streaming.
I think social media critics forget the days when everyone felt like they were wasting their life obsessively checking their email or refreshing the news. This has been there from the beginning. The only difference now is that we pretend there's someone to blame other than ourselves. As evidence, here's the history of Randall Monroe dealing with internet addiction in his comics.
https://xkcd.com/862/ https://xkcd.com/597/ https://xkcd.com/187/ https://xkcd.com/77/
https://xkcd.com/862/ https://xkcd.com/597/ https://xkcd.com/187/ https://xkcd.com/77/
Read "Ev Williams" and thought of "Evan Williams" the bourbon and was like I don't see how the maker of a cheap alcohol is going to help fix the internet.
> "Not in the cigarette sense — it wasn't as cynical," he added. "It was just a game, like: 'This is fun. How do we make it more fun and addictive?'"
> But he is not convinced that the problems with social platforms can ever be fully solved, nor does he believe it's entirely incumbent upon tech companies to solve them. Ultimately, Mr. Williams said, it will be up to users to choose, and stick to, their own information diets.
Sounds a lot more like cigarette companies than Williams thinks.
They, too, tend to operate under a philosophy of, "Hey, we're just giving people a CHOICE to smoke tobacco. Why blame us if people take us up on it?"