Oh, you assume X is the only app that would be open to doing this? Hm
That’s a good assumption to call out, I’ve been thinking about X and lists a lot recently but I haven’t properly considered who would be working on improving civilization’s epistemics.
Elon musk and his people seem to be in favor of promoting prediction-market style improvements, which I think would probably more than compensate for influence tech because widespread prediction market adoption facilitates sanity and moloch-elimination, and the current state of influence tech is a primarily caused by civilizational derangement and moloch.
However, twitter isn’t secure or sovereign enough to properly do optimized influence, because they would get detected counteracted by the sovereign big fish like Facebook or the NSA. They can, on the other hand, pump out algorithms that reliably predict truth, and deploy them at scale, even if this threatens disinformation campaigns coming out of US state-adjacent agencies.
My understanding of advertisers is that they’re always trying to get a larger share of the gains from trade. I don’t know how successful advertisers tend to be due to information asymmetry and problems with sourcing talent; this is interesting with powerful orgs like wall street banks like JP Morgan which seems to be trying out their own business model for sensor-related tech.
I don’t think wikipedians are generally statistically minded, so when they say “routinely” they could mean it happens like 20 times a year. They’d probably notice most of them.
Hm my intuition would be that platforms aren’t totally on point at processing their data and they would want to offload that work to advertisers, and there are enough competing big platforms now (youtube, instagram, X, tiktok) that they might not have enough bargaining power to defend their integrity.
my intuition would be that platforms aren’t totally on point at processing their data
That’s interesting, we have almost opposite stances on this.
My intuition is that Instagram, youtube, and possibly tiktok are very on-point with processing their data, but with occasional catastrophic failures due to hacks by intelligence agencies which steal data and poison the original copy, and also incompetence/bloat (like spaghetti towers) or unexpected consequences from expanding into uncharted territory. Whereas Twitter/X lacks the security required to do much more than just show people ads based on easy-to-identify topics of interest.
Uh I guess I meant like, there’s no way they can do enough to give advertisers 30% of the value their data has without giving many databrokers (who advertisers contract) access to the data, because the advertisers needs are too diverse and the skill ceiling is very high. This equilibrium might not have realized yet but I’d guess eventually will.
Oh, you assume X is the only app that would be open to doing this? Hm
If it actually requires detailed user monitoring, I wonder if there are any popular platforms that let some advertisers have access to that.
I think it might not require that, in which case support from the app itself isn’t needed.
That’s a good assumption to call out, I’ve been thinking about X and lists a lot recently but I haven’t properly considered who would be working on improving civilization’s epistemics.
Elon musk and his people seem to be in favor of promoting prediction-market style improvements, which I think would probably more than compensate for influence tech because widespread prediction market adoption facilitates sanity and moloch-elimination, and the current state of influence tech is a primarily caused by civilizational derangement and moloch.
However, twitter isn’t secure or sovereign enough to properly do optimized influence, because they would get detected counteracted by the sovereign big fish like Facebook or the NSA. They can, on the other hand, pump out algorithms that reliably predict truth, and deploy them at scale, even if this threatens disinformation campaigns coming out of US state-adjacent agencies.
I’m not sure whether to trust Yudkowsky, who says community notes seem to work well, or Wikipedia, which claims to list tons of cases where community notes are routinely wrong or exploited by randos (rather than just state-level actors who can exploit anything); if Wikipedia is right and the tech isn’t finished, then it’s all aspirational and we can’t yet evaluate whether Elon and Twitter are committed to civilization.
My understanding of advertisers is that they’re always trying to get a larger share of the gains from trade. I don’t know how successful advertisers tend to be due to information asymmetry and problems with sourcing talent; this is interesting with powerful orgs like wall street banks like JP Morgan which seems to be trying out their own business model for sensor-related tech.
I don’t think wikipedians are generally statistically minded, so when they say “routinely” they could mean it happens like 20 times a year. They’d probably notice most of them.
Hm my intuition would be that platforms aren’t totally on point at processing their data and they would want to offload that work to advertisers, and there are enough competing big platforms now (youtube, instagram, X, tiktok) that they might not have enough bargaining power to defend their integrity.
That’s interesting, we have almost opposite stances on this.
My intuition is that Instagram, youtube, and possibly tiktok are very on-point with processing their data, but with occasional catastrophic failures due to hacks by intelligence agencies which steal data and poison the original copy, and also incompetence/bloat (like spaghetti towers) or unexpected consequences from expanding into uncharted territory. Whereas Twitter/X lacks the security required to do much more than just show people ads based on easy-to-identify topics of interest.
Uh I guess I meant like, there’s no way they can do enough to give advertisers 30% of the value their data has without giving many databrokers (who advertisers contract) access to the data, because the advertisers needs are too diverse and the skill ceiling is very high. This equilibrium might not have realized yet but I’d guess eventually will.