IamA Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia now trying a totally new social network concept WT.Social AMA!

I played around with crowd sourced policy development in a couple of countries a few years ago and ran into a lot of the same sort of problems I see with social media and I wonder how you deal with them in any open, distributed, contributor lead system.. Essentially the core issue I kept running into was that what should have been an open and accessible system, increasing involvement instead saw a growth of 'influencers' or individuals with disproportionate reach (often just as a consequence of having more time..) and in a policy context often then an increased level of input (essentially delegated) that meant that they could more easily set the narriative around any given policy.

So basically I repeatedly ended up with what appeared to be a more democratic system with more input and engagement, but with a small subset of people with more of a say. In that context the engagement became a veneer rather than anything real and people, unsurprisingly slowly felt that they weren't as empowered as they might be.

The second issue was the clustering problem (essentially the creation of bubbles). People would generally only engage in areas they were interested in and you'd end up seeing a consensus created that was hard to challenge, not because it was a minority position across the board, but because unless there was a critical mass at any given moment, it was drowned out by the more continually engaged members..

I sort of get the impression that these are inherent in social media generally, and in any online group (and arguably offline groups..) above a certain size simply as a function of lots of people getting together.

Is there a way to minimise or mitigate those and are you looking to?

TLDR - Assuming you'd see that sort of influencer effect and the formation of bubbles as negatives, and indeed see people having access to accurate information and (especially in a political context) not just views from one outlook, I wonder if there is anything you'd be looking to do to minimise those negatives?

Other than that, I look forward to seeing where this goes! I've used reddit and twitter quite a bit and find both useful albeit I do tend to find I have to curate what I am seeing every few months, but stayed away from facebook (from a privacy perspective largely) and new alternatives are always massively welcome, especially those with privacy built in and where there is anything that mitigates misinformation and outright disinformation.

Wow I really hope you'll join the discussion with me on https://wt.social about policy because you totally get it. The balance is hard to strike and thoughtfulness and hard work is always necessary.

One key to the wiki approach is that creating a subwiki (or for example, a new article at Wikipedia) doesn't give you any special power over it. So you sort of have to find a way to collaborate with people of good will where you may not agree on everything.

But yes, communities often fall into a kind of conservatism (I don't mean politically) where we do things this way because that's the way we do things. I think you could get an easy win on a vote at Wikipedia that we need to figure out how to make more good people admins, but we have no consensus about how to do it, so that problem stays stuck for years.

While WT.Social sounds like a noble idea and I'm excited to check it out, are you at all worried that it will be held back by the fact that the name isn't fun or catchy? I admit it's silly, but sadly this kind of thing matters when trying to attract users.

Well, it's short and memorable at least. It's short for "WikiTribune Social" which was just a long thing to type and maybe not so memorable.

I don't know. Hard to find a great domain name these days.

How are posts ranked? Any system introduces different incentives, some good some bad, do you see any bad incentives arising from your system (non-ad based) and how do believe the community or the platform can deal with that?

E.g. to narrow down the topic, a system that 100% community determined and zero profit-seeking distortions may still cause problems. For example, if you rank topics depending on network or "this person viewed this and that" it easily can generate cliques and bubbles. Do you have plans to maybe break such bubbles, perhaps a quasi "fairness doctrine" that makes two communities that are distant enough see eachother, maybe even an "alternative viewpoint sidebar"?

I love your thinking - I think the same way.

And I don't pretend to have all the answers right now. I wish I were omniscient and could tell you a magic formula which simultaneously solves all the problems but I am not.

However, I think by paying attention to exactly the things you mentioned, and a few more besides, is the right way forward.

I have said for a long time that I wish facebook would have a setting: "Instead of showing you things we think you will like, we want to show you things we think you'll disagree with, but which we have signals that suggest they are of quality." There's nothing better, really, than finding something challenging and interesting that I disagree with, but for which I have to concede: it makes me think.

Delicious!

Maybe there could be like a sort of specialized, hidden upvote/like system to suggest different types of quality? Like a user can rate a post, but it isn't publically displayed to prevent karma whoring. And the different forms of rating might be like new-perspective, well-researched, breaking-news, etc... as proxies for quality.

Analyzing heterogeneous hidden endorsements could really provide some novel insights into how to target social media to one another for optimal human benefit. I know this is sort of already done publically with reactions, but a reaction doesn't really get at something deep or meaningful.

We're going to experiment. I like this idea.

Do you plan on hiring large machine learning teams to create your targeting algorithms? What sort of monetary investment do you guys have in this project?

Also, I have a follow up question. What are your thoughts on an internal social-credit system? People who have (internal) reputations of judging things fairly or making quality posts end up having a disproportionate influence on the underlying algorithms decision to show the content you're endorsing to other people (obviously with the disproportionality bounded).

I prefer humans to machine learning but obviously I'm keeping an eye on all developments.

Monetary investment? I think I'm in so far for about a half a million dollars? I'm bootstrapping from nothing and I don't have any immediate plans to raise money although that could change. Right now I'm all about carefully maintaining creative control and taking investment too early wouldn't be consistent with that.

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We're still very much in the thinking stages about what boundaries should be. My view is that I don't have all the answers here, but that if we have the right incentives, we (as a community) can get to a good place.

Let's think about a spectrum. Serious news outlet posting links to news, that doesn't seem very problematic to me. Mars posting content about Mars (which is collaboratively editable) in an appropriate place (subwiki about Mars) could be ok or not, I'd need to see it and think about it.

A random company posting promotional crap all over the site, totally not ok.

The key is: the judgment of the community will have power.

I love the idea that the judgment of the community will have power. I do worry, though, about how susceptible it might be to sabotage. If our community of 100 people agreed that Mars shouldn't be able to post promotional stuff, then Mars would be barred from doing so. But if Mars paid a social media consultant to operate 500 accounts, then our community of 600 people would likely be okay with it, right?

That kind of tactic doesn't work well at Wikipedia. The key is: if your system has easily game-able voting mechanisms, you can expect it to be games. But if it's based on genuine dialogue, well, anyone can enter that discussion.

No, it isn't perfect. But in my experience it works pretty well.

The key is: the judgment of the community will have power.

Judging by /r/all the community shouldn't have any power. Most of it's clickbait for either agenda/karma/currency. That's the bigger issue as well, all social media is, is promoting an agenda, trying to be popular, or trying to earn money. It doesn't really have the value you want it to have. You appear to have been thinking about "what's next for Jimmy Wales" and crawled your way into a tunnel. Come back out, there are so many other things that need you.

Thanks for your support. And I recommend you reimagine what social media could be.

Hello, mr. Wales!

As a hobbyist musician I frequently feel forced to use social media outlets to increase my online presence and make myself heard. What would WT.Social mean for content creators such as myself, especially the ones who are mostly interested in sharing their content as opposed to profiting from it?

Thanks!

I think one of the biggest things could be genuine organic reach rather than paid reach. Most social media makes you pay to get your message out rather than people finding it organically. Like, if you post on Facebook when you have 10,000 followers, how many of them actually see it - unless you pay.

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I think different people can use it for different things.

Will I be able to use WT.social for purely social purposes, blocking all advertising / promotional content (at least as well as I could expect among a gathering of friends)?

Sure.

How did you keep track of the misinformation people purposely put onto Wikipedia when it first started out?

Because everything is collaboratively editable, anyone who tried to put misinformation into Wikipedia (or tries today) generally finds it difficult in the face of a community of goodwill. People who persist get blocked. It isn't perfect, but as we've seen, it works pretty well.

It works pretty well because as it turns out, most people are basically nice. Not everyone, so we can't be naive about it, but pretty much most people are nice.

Just wanted to thank you for pointing this out. Everyone has the capacity for kindness and meanness. Environmental factors decide what aspect is expressed. Keep treating people with respect and dignity and kindness will spread.

YES!

in the face of a community of goodwill

This is the key to community moderation in the 21st Century. You have to trust the community to encourage good conversation, keep out bad actors and extremists, and so forth.

It's easy (relatively) when it's a group of academics/borderline academics who are trying to keep a source as factually correct as possible.

It's harder when it's a collection of people posting opinions, shitposting, antagognising each other for luls, and are 10x the size.

How do you engender that community of goodwill and ensure that the bad actors are very much the minority and hence controllable?

Good software design and what I call community design. Design that makes it slightly easier to do good and slightly harder to do bad.

Much social media is practically designed to reward trolling. Make a throwaway account on twitter and post obnoxious racist comments to 100 people. They can yell at you, block you (which only helps them, not the broader community), or report you (to overwhelmed systems involving poor people in shitty jobs).

You annoy a lot of people at minimal cost - successful trolling!

Now try it at Wikipedia (actually don't please) - your comment gets deleted by whoever sees it first and you get blocked by admin very swiftly. The process isn't actually all that fun.

That's a rough anecdotal way to think about the design issue, but it points you in the direction of my thinking.

I’m really interested in some of the design decisions that went into promoting positive behaviours, and making it difficult to behave poorly. Can you shed any light on these? As a studying designer, it is extremely interesting.

Well let me give the simplest example, but we are a very very long way from having the platform completed.

On twitter it's super easy to troll. Just create a throwaway account. Using the @ functionality start posting things to famous accounts that are plausible but provocative. When they respond, launch into a racist rant.

When people see it there are only 3 things they can do: block you (which helps them but no one else), yell at you (yay twitter flame war), or report you (to an overworked and underpaid bunch of people who can't cope with the volume at all).

In a wiki - collaboratively editable - anyone on the platform can remove the racist rant immediately. Which makes the trolling a lot less fun, as your power to cause people to see it unwillingly is minimized.

This introduces other possible problems, but now we are down a design path that says: "How do we devolve genuine power into the community?"

I tried to change my dad's birthday on his Wikipedia page (it's a month off), and I got denied. How do you explain that, Jimmy?

If you visit my user page there and ask there with a link to the article, I'm sure that would be beneficial.

Usually on dates of birth it has to do with having a reliable source. Sometimes that gets tricky. If you signed up and had no proof, I'm sure you can see why the community might not have been so keen to just believe some random account.

If you had a real source, and they denied you anyway, that's a super odd thing to have happen and I'm happy to have a look.

How much do you feel you have you learned about human nature from watching them interact on large scales?

So the main thing is that contrary to what badly designed software on the Internet tends to teach us, it turns out that just as in real life, pretty much most people are nice!

Out of every 1,000 people I think 990 of them are perfectly nice and wonderful. 9 of them are super annoying but not really actively malicious. And then there's that 1.

So most Internet software is designed around that 1 with everything set to maximum defense mode and giving no real power to the 990. The wiki philosophy is different: everyone can edit everything, everyone has power, and we still have to cope with the 9 annoying ones, and really deal (ban hammer) with the 1.

But most people are nice, and I think that's a pretty good thing.

would you be willing to ban hammer trump if he touted the same kind of nuclear trigger happiness that he does on twitter?

I'd be so excited to do that, yes.

On en.wp?

LMAO!!!!

Are you just a miniTrump where anyone who critiques you in 'nasty'?

No, I'm actually very calm and polite. Even to you. Not sure why - mostly it amuses me.

Is a hotdog a sandwich?

I am a structure purist. A hotdog is not a sandwich.

I accept that there are other viewpoints in the world and I can live together with them harmoniously. I may not invite them back to the 4th of July if they make a big issue out of it. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog

Wikipedia says that you're wrong.

Meh.

I am thoroughly enjoying your responses.

Thanks! I'm having fun too!

What are your plans to deal with highly controversial conversations, hate speech, and possibly blurred moral lines in heated discussions? (as an example to provide some perspective, let's say, something like discussing Islam in the context of terrorism)

Everything on the platform (just about) is collaboratively editable, and so I expect that we'll see community norms arise which quickly eliminate such things.

My view is that there is usually a bigger problem with thoughtful conversations about potentially emotionally difficult topics in areas where the software design means that the only thing you can do about a troublemaker is block them (for yourself), yell at them, or report them. Better tools mean a better environment.

I see lots of issues with this. This won't be a place for "everyone".

Yes, I don't think white supremacists are going to enjoy it.

But I think a lot of people will.

Again I go back to business model. With a pure advertising business model you want to have something that absolutely everyone in the world can put up with. With a business model of voluntary payment you want to build something that is meaningful enough that some people will be willing to pay for it.

Here's another analogy. In the days of advertising-supported broadcast television the way to "win" was quality content but that was popular with almost everyone. In the current era of streaming, you don't win with that, you win with stuff that is good enough that at least one person in every household is willing to pay for it.

Both have their good and bad points.

Really excited to "speak" with you, Jimmy! Thanks you for taking the time.

What efforts are being taken with your new platform to allow users to have more control and consent over what happens with the data they provide to the system?

First of all we ask for very little data. Second, we absolutely don't sell your data or use it for advertising, which is of course a common way for it to "leak". And you can always deactivate your account.

you can always deactivate your account.

Can you delete your account as well?

We can delete it for you right now, but soon you can delete it yourself.

And what happens to your data?

The data that we delete is deleted. I'm not really sure what you are asking here.

I believe he would be asking that because "deleted" doesn't always mean "deleted" with social media. It could be publicly unavailable and unrecoverable by the user, but still archived on company servers somewhere.

Ok. Well, look, from a very practical point of view it's very very difficult to promise that something will be absolutely deleted from all possible backups or archives. I won't make that promise.

But to the maximum extent possible within commercially reasonable bounds and technical requirements, the idea is to delete things.

Actually a good answer when it could have just been PR speak. I'm impressed.

Thanks!

If a corporation offers money to users directly, would your platform enable users to sell their personal data?

No, I don't think that's a business I want to be in. I'm also not convinced it is a viable business.

I love your attitude but I'm curious why you think it isn't a viable business.

I might be wrong. I have never seen anyone be successful with it. I know the idea has been bounced around and some crypto people are massively into it... I'm just not convinced.

I think I'm basically not very good at "b-to-b" business models. I like to build things that a lot of people will want to use. Figuring out how to sell people's data and then distribute the money to them just isn't my kind of thing. :)

Hi Jimmy! Thanks for your time.

I’m a design professional and I can’t help but notice your very barebones design of your site. Was that intentional? Or is the aesthetic feel of your site not on your radar?

To elaborate, you may hinder your ability to grow organically if people (outside of the academic minority) feel your website is “dated” “cold” or “too lifeless”. Alternatively, you could say your site is designed that way on purpose to make it seem less frivolous or “not like the other guys”. A very static and “beige” approach to design is typical of a Wiki site, I’ve found, and can help it’s goal of academic neutrality. In a social context, however, where people will spend large swaths of time, I can see this being a hindrance for you.

I of course don’t mean these as insults, but as a genuine question of the design direction.

Hey, I don't feel insulted at all.

I think it looks a lot like Facebook, twitter, etc. So - I'm not really sure what you mean.

If you mean things like fonts and the shape of the corners of boxes, I'm terrible at that stuff.

I mean look, we're here on reddit, which isn't exactly gorgeous.

I think the substantive design is what really matters as opposed to "aesthetic feel". But - I'm not against improving it.

Given low financial resources (compared to the big players), how will you be able to prevent malicious actors (eg, ISIS) from using your platform to spread hate?

Community control is strong.

You see one of the biggest problems with existing social media is that their fundamental paradigm doesn't scale well. "Users have very little power except to block each other (which doesn't help others), to yell at people (unpleasant and leads to flame wars), or reporting (to paid staff who are overworked and underpaid and get it wrong quite a lot as a result).

Basically, genuine community control is what makes wikis work.

What do you think is the best example that you can specifically point to which shows just how wrong 'traditional' social media is?

I've been personally accused of horrible crimes on twitter. I put up with a lot of insults, but you know, there is a line where it's just not ok.

So I reported it to twitter. I got back a response saying "We don't see a terms of service violation here" basically.

I emailed Jack and he apologized and said they would take care of it, but I was like: that misses my point entirely. I'm me, I can email Jack Dorsey. I can't imagine what a nightmare it is for many vulnerable people who have no ability to do anything about it.

At the end of this day would you share with us how many new registered members do you have since opening this obviously self promoting topic?

​

Edit: i was 94582 in the waiting list at the moment when this topic was opened.

Absolutely. I hope it's a lot.

Literally every AMA is self promotion of some sort..... please carry on

:-)

Have you ever played the Wikipedia game where you and one other person start at a random article, choose a topic, and see who can get there first?

It's really easy to get to Hitler from basically any article, just a heads up.

3... 2.. 1....

Brady Bunch, go! Find Hitler!

First person to get a correct answer I'll send you a nondenominational holiday card.

Brady Bunch -> Cultural Icon -> Mass Media -> Propaganda -> Adolf Hitler

Ding ding ding!

Send me a dm with your address and i'll send you the card!

Why is there a waiting list? I'm excited for this alternative, and I myself paid because I wanted to get in and start a special interest subwiki ASAP, but everyone I've been sharing with to try to get them to join has been extremely discouraged to the point of not wanting to bother because they can't participate. This seems rather counterproductive to the goal.

I agree that it has major downsides. We had to do it in order to deal with the sudden load.

I didn't do a big embargoed PR launch with a ton of investment money. We built this (2 developers, 1 community manager, and me) from scratch in a few months time. Word got out in Germany and we grew much faster than anticipated.

We're cranking up the admission rate and I've hired a 3rd developer. We've open sourced the code and have a group of trusted volunteers looking through it now for security issues and the like and when we get consensus that we're ok we'll open up a public repository.

I did it this way rather than the conventional route (which I could have done!) of raising money from VCs and moving forward, because I have a creative vision here and I don't want any outside pressure on me right now.

Howdy Jimmy, what do you think of the videos that the US Navy released that are supposedly of UFOs? Do you believe that something not of this Earth might be visiting us?

No, I don't believe that aliens are visiting us. While I really wish that were true, I think that what we know of the distances of space and the unlikelihood of faster than light travel suggests that it is not possible. Of course, we may discover new technology in the future to show a different answer. I just think: unlikely.

I want to leave Facebook but there are three things stopping me:

1. All my friends are there
2. It's great for posting pictures
3. It's great for organizing events

WT.Social can't do much about point one, but is the goal to be a new place for points two and three? From what I've seen it seems more geared towards replacing Reddit than replacing Facebook, but I'll admit I haven't explored it that much.

We're currently more geared to news and less to purely social content, although that's possible as well. I think as we improve the platform in various ways we'll have a richer feature set that may meet those needs better.

What online communities besides ones you preside other, you think get it 'right'? If any?

I think some areas of reddit really get it right, but I also think (sorry reddit) that is somewhat despite the community model here, in which mods of individual subreddits have nearly absolute power.

It's just - some people/communities are good at it here, and I think that's lovely.

I'm in the queue to join, somewhere around the 100k mark. What is your deployment/adoption schedule? Is it dependant on finding new funding options or is it based around stress testing infrastructure already in place? I'm quite eager to try this and am curious about the time frame.

It's about both. We're letting in several thousand people a day. Last week we really cranked it up and got through over 100,000.

I think I'll give it a good boost tomorrow and see if the servers hold.

But yeah, you can also invite someone and when they sign up, you'll get in.

It's so confusing. You sign up and are immediately asked to donate. Even while still in the queue and having no idea what this all might be about. I feel this is wrong in so many ways vs what you said in your opening statement. Can't the financial aspect at least wait until a user has at least seen the platform?

Sure, as soon as we can handle the volume. :)

The original concept of the internet was amazing, being a tool of democratic communication. What it takes to get this crazy, loud internet back to it's roots?

I think it takes innovation and people to support those innovations.

Thanks for doing this, Jimmy!

Yesterday, WT:Social recommended that I join a subwiki that’s dedicated to attacks on trans people. Do you think this is okay? If not, how do you plan to keep things like this from happening in the future?

I'm sure it was deleted quickly - if not let me know. That's totally unacceptable.

The key to wikis is genuine community control - putting the power in the hands of the quality members of the community rather than having to wait for someone to do something. As we grow, we plan to have more and more tools to allow that kind of control.

Nope, it's still there. https://wt.social/wt/stop-the-gender-madness There isn't any "report subwiki" option (at least not that I could find) so I am not sure what power people currently have to stop stuff like this from happening.

What kinds of tools are you planning on introducing to help with this as you grow?

Reporting subwikis - yes.

But also that the names, descriptions, and so on of subwikis can be edited. Admins have the power to merge, delete, etc.

Thanks very much for the responses, and thanks also for deleting the subwiki. I'm working on a followon post about WT:Social and will include a link to this discussion - I'll drop it here and tag you on Twitter when it's ready.

Great!

Jimmy you are an absolute hero of the internet. What are the key differences in user privacy between your new platform, which I've already signed up to, and Facebook ?

I'd say the main thing is that we don't sell or use your data for advertising. I mean, that changes a lot.

There's also the question of business model. For conventional social media, there is a tension between what users want and what advertisers want. If our users (some small percentage of them anyway) are paying the bills, then obviously what they want wins.

If you could go back to 1990 and change one thing about how the web developed, what would it be?

Personally, I would have introduced alternative financing models early on in order to avoid the expectation that web content be free, and therefore driving companies to seek other streams of revenue, i.e. collecting and selling data. I think this set up a bad incentive structure early on.

What would you change?

I wish we'd had encryption as a default much much earlier.

Is there a "mobile" roadmap?

Kind of? We need more funding, more developers.

i've deliberately chosen to go "lean startup" and "grassroots" to grow this - there are no investors (other than me) right now, and so I have complete creative control.

The downside is: I can't yet build an app. But I want to, as soon as we can.

Do you believe in a social media platform that gives you absolute access to all the data being tracked on you in real time?

I want to see my full profile. I understand the act of accessing the internet is an acceptance of my exposure to beasts and i dont believe encryption will save us.

I just want to see my data profiles

I don't really know how to answer that.

I'm here on reddit posting, and there's a ton of data being generated that I wouldn't find useful to access.

I think I agree with you in general spirit, I just think "absolute access to all the data" sounds a bit impractical.

Hello Jimmy Wales. If the platforms grows exponentially, how do you plan on stopping misinformation? What types of users (and what proportion) are currently responsible for writing Wikipedia articles? I saw in another response you said "nice people", but are these accomplished writers/users? I am also curious, how many articles does 1 person write? are there special users who contribute a lot?

In the future to stop botting/malicious editing you might have to add some restrictions. If you restrict editing to accounts with subscriptions, isn't that the same as people paying to rewrite facts and kind of like advertising?

Thank you

We definitely won't restrict editing to people who pay for exactly the reason you mention - paying for something doesn't mean you are a good writer.

My views on scalability are that, designed well, communities inherently scale. People live in small villages and mega-cities and they all work - although of course different problems and different solutions apply at different scales.

How can we be sure that it does not get corrupt in the long run?

I think the business model helps - people will only pay if they are getting value from it.

But of course there's never a perfect guarantee that anything will remain perfect in the longest of long runs. But good values and a strong community helps.

Hi Jimmy!

While the model has been quite successful for Wikipedia don't you think this is large part due to the absence of a similar product in the marketplace at Wikipedia's inception?

We're already saturated with social media platforms. While I would like to see WT.Social, or any social media platform using the same business model, succeed, I'm very doubtful. Why do you think I'm wrong?

Thanks for you answer and your contributions to the internet.

I don't know. I don't think anything particularly similar to https://WT.social exists at all.

A social media platform where just about everything is collaboratively editable is a pretty wild concept.

A social media platform where just about everything is collaboratively editable is a pretty wild concept.

I just signed up so I could check out the concept. However, I'm nearly number 100k in the waiting list. When do you expect we'll be able to gain access?

I'm not sure I want to spend $12.99 to preview a social media site. I suspect I'm not alone.

Sure, you aren't alone. Lots of people are paying but lots aren't. That's cool.

You can invite someone to get access or my guess is it will just a few days for you. I'm cranking up the volume of admissions as fast as I can.

Hello, have you tried this in Hong Kong?

Will you accept government donations?

Will this work with TOR network?

I've donated to Wikipedia and hope others have as well. Thank you for that.

We are accessible in Hong Kong. And China so far as far as I know, although I suspect that won't last long.

I haven't thought about "government donations" but it doesn't sound like a thing I'd be particularly interested in nor that would be likely.

I like TOR and so far we're accessible on TOR but there are some huge difficulties with abuse coming through TOR so we'll have to be practical about that.

When you started Wikipedia, did you think most people would be as courteous and good about editing content and not letting it become a hellhole if misinformation? (And asshole behavior).

Wikipedia is one site I can trust my kids to go to for information with my having to police it. Thank you for this and so much more!

Edited for content

Thank you!

And of course it isn't perfect but yes, I find that most people are courteous and good.

It was something of a revelation to me - I have to say that in the early days I would sometimes get up in the middle of the night to check the side because I thought someone would come in and wreck it all.

Do we have to use our real names?

Great question!

I want to have a "real name culture" because I think one of the biggest problems on twitter (massively) and reddit (to some extent) are throwaway attack accounts with obnoxious names created by the hundreds.

At the same time, there are genuinely good reasons for anonymity online.

I think the key is a thoughtful approach to pseudonymity.

It didn't seem to be a problem on Wikipedia, but that space was/is monitored by admins. Will there be a peer monitoring system in the WT.social space?

Yes, exactly. Devolving power into the hands of the users is the best way to scale.

Why does Wikipedia constantly beg for donations and talk about going under when they have a large reserve of money?

Wikipedia has to take fundraising seriously. Many of our donors cite as a major value that Wikipedia should be safe. People really wouldn't like it if we were not stably funded and largely by small donations. The independence of Wikipedia would be at risk if we didn't run the organization in a thoughtful and financially responsible way, building our reserves over the years.

Hey Jimmy,

I am wondering to what extent you would employ auto moderation or outsource moderation services like Facebook does? As someone who uses Facebook fairly frequently but is ready to move away from it, one of my biggest complaints with the current reigning social network is that it’s moderation policies are often applied with little rhyme or reason.

Also just wanna say huge fan of the work you’ve done. Creating a centralized database of free and well curated knowledge is one of the biggest accomplishments of the Internet.

The concept of wt.social is to put the power in the hands of community. The existing model of "hire a bunch of poor people to have a really horrible and low paid job moderating content" isn't working very well at Facebook. I don't think it scales.

How can we encourage members to focus on the content, instead of discrediting a news source, and thereby enable us to come out of the victimhood culture?

For example when Quillette articles got posted, many WT.Social members immediately jumped to complaining about the source, wanting to censor it out of the platform. There were hardly any discussion of the content of the article.

My view is that collaboration and kindness as a part of the culture is a big part of it.

One reason we have a victimhood culture (which goes in many directions) on social media is that you typically have only 3 choices to deal with something awful: block the person so you don't see them anymore (which doesn't help the broader community), yell at the person (which is why so many places are poisonous), or report the person (into systems that don't scale and get it wrong quite a lot).

Better is genuine community control in the wiki way.

Better is genuine community control in the wiki way.

I'm not so sure. For example, the anti-trumpers get together and down-vote any message they object to.

I'm not interested in community control as an effective way to manage free speech.

Have a look at Reddit.com for many examples. Oh, wait...

Yes this is why voting isn't particularly helpful in many cases.

In wikis we generally don't vote, strictly speaking. We do what we call a !vote (meaning not-vote) which is like a straw poll / discussion in an effort to find consensus.

Do you think the name 'James Wales' would have more gravitas than 'Jimmy Wales?'

It might, but I'm from Alabama. It's my actual name not a nickname.

How does it feel to know that nobody is going to pay 100 bucks a year to use this?

If you don't want to pay, you don't have to pay. But I bet at least one of your friends will. And maybe after you've let your friend buy a round, you'll decide at some point it's your turn. Or not. I don't really mind either way.

I need about 1 in 200 people to pay is all. And they are doing that, so it's all good.

What was the last thing you looked up on the wikipedia?

Princess Mononoke, a few minutes ago, to make sure I remembered the name right! (Someone asked me about anime here!)

Why did the previous attempt to wrestle social media from a few major companies - Diaspora - fail?

I'm not a big fan of distributed systems for things like this. I think that's a big part of it. Decisions need to be made quickly and centrally to adapt and change, and typically (not always) distributed models struggle with that.

I also think that distributed designs have difficulties due to "competing with themselves" - that is, lots of little mastodon communities exist, but they don't coalesce into anything universal or big.

I'm not saying I hate distributed or that I'm against what they are doing. I'm just saying - it's hard and it hasn't worked.

Mr Jimmy, when are you going to fork out for some shiny ux / design work on any of your products?

I like things that work, so if you're talking about usability I'm all ears.

Shiny, I'm not so worried about.

How can you protect the unpopular divergent perspectives (which may be true and ahead of the times, but shut out by keyboard warriors)?

With the one exception of wiki, it seems like all social and info platforms have to cater to separating different circles of groupthink, and that's the core of all the misunderstanding of one another in this increasingly extremist internet world. Its cognitive dissonance that keeps our bubbles strong, most people don't really want to be challenged but everyone wants their ideas reinforced. It's great that your platform is stepping away from ad money influence, which really just feeds and uses the bubbles, but yet tribalism runs deep and people on all social medias have founded their bubbles long before the ads rolled out to begin with.

How do you develop a more well rounded culture from the start, without activating everybody's defense mechanisms against 'the others' until diversity erodes into yet another groupthink bubble?

"With the one exception of wiki" - I think that a great many design decisions lead to the outcomes you discuss. I don't think they are inevitable. I don't have all the answers but frankly it seems pretty easy these days to do a bit better.

Do you watch anime by any chance and if yes what’s your favorite one?

In general, I don't want anime, but I really loved Princess Mononoke when I saw it a million years ago.

Your track record of motivation & results w/ Wikipedia is very encouraging.

Can you give me the elevator pitch as to why/how WT social solves the problems we have created for ourselves with other social media?

Advertising-only social media inherently needs us addicted and clicking to see ever more ads. A social media platform that only makes money if (a few) users pay has a different set of incentives: to care for your mind, for a quality experience.

You certainly have my support. I think we'll ALL need to work on the offering (by curating real quality spaces) to get it traction in the circles beyond those who intrinsically just "get it" and see why we need something different. It's those who don't see why it's required who probably need it the most.

The existing social media platforms have hacked into peoples brains by optimising content in a way which triggers the evolutionary programmed responses of flight/flight. It's a monumental & worthy task to try and bring people back to the shore. :)

Yours with sincere gratitude and respect for your work.

Thank you for those kind words!

Appreciate you doing this, Jimmy.

Most popular platforms use personal information (cell phone numbers, geographic location, etc) to connect new and existing users. How do you plan to help integrate new users into the community, if at all?

Thanks for your time.

It's a balance - people are paranoid about giving up information and yet it can be super useful at helping them find each other.

One thing we are doing that I think is pretty cool is what I call a "group invite" - you create one for your friends or family or coworkers or some other group who all know each other. You give it to them all and they are automatically friended on the platform when they sign up. I think it's a convenient way to persuade people who might not get the value, and to have friends there from the start.

This sounds like a very interesting take on a social network and I am very interested in how you intend to tackle a global marketplace if this project launches successfully.

If advertisement only is the wrong way to go about social media from your point of view, does this mean that WT.social will have its own self-sustained and/or self-regulated inner economy? Will users be able to make a profit off of it if they pay in of their own free will? Or will there even be a paywall to block out social media users looking to make a living using this as an open platform?

There's a lot of internal discussion about whether we could/should have a sort of "patreon" model to support individual journalists. I'm not opposed at all, but it introduces some very interesting dynamics that I want to be careful about.

Hi! Instagram in particular has had many hashtags flagged and accounts banned or shadow banned because they are pole dancers, photographers or artists. This has seemingly all been done under the guise of putting a stop to sex trafficking yet it is targeting content creators and the average Jane who just wants to put a video of a cool pole trick she learned. What is WT.Social's stance here?

I'm cool with all that.

Remember: advertising as a business model drives a lot of that stuff. Be the customer, not the product.

Will 2nd Amendment groups be filtered or restricted?

No but please understand - the purpose of the platform is not advocacy but thoughtful analysis and dialogue. So I'm quite sure that at least some people on both sides of that debate will find themselves in hot water with the community if they can't be civil.

There are enough places on the web to turn for a flamewar. This isn't it.

If something is free, you're the product. How is that untrue of your new anti-social media social media company? Also, is it a platform or a publisher?

You're only the product if you're being sold - to advertisers. This is free in the sense that some people will pay and other people will not.

It is a platform.

I scrolled through and didn't see any questions about this. What is your view on federated social networks like Mastodon? Any particular reason you did not go that route for WT.social?

I'm not a huge fan of those models, but not really opposed.

The main thing is that the design of the site is radical - everything collaboratively editable - whereas mastodon already has a fixed "view" of "how things work" that didn't meet my needs.

What is your favorite memory of Huntsville, and how often do you make it back?

I really loved having the space program in town. Fuelled a lot of dreams of technology and science.

I'm back maybe once a year or so, to see my parents. I was last there in January.

Hello Jimmy, your idea is superb. I'm planning to sign up very soon.

I wanted to share a thought: Reddit sounds a lot like the social media you want to build, except in Reddit everybody is anonymous. Also: reddit moderation volunteers do a great job moderating content.

Do you have any goals concerning the number on WT social in the next years? Also: do you have any deep-pocketed sponsors helping you financially to put all this together?

No deep-pocketed sponsors. I'm bootstrapping from nothing on a shoestring. This preserves my creative independence. I'm fortunate to be able to do that.

I think to really take on major major social media some investment will be required - but I want to wait until I have enough strength that I can do it on terms that preserve my vision.

What will you do to protect the private lives of your users and what will you do to protect them against 3rd party abuses?

What will you do to prevent the filterbubble/echo chamber problem?

also, have you ever seen [https://imgur.com/1FMpd](this?)

For now, we don't have any private spaces on the website. No private messaging, etc.

Why? My view is that accepting people's private messages is a huge responsibility that has to be done with full end-to-end encryption and that brings with it other complexities. My view as well is that private groups are often breeding grounds for racists and other toxicities.

So, we want to stay out of people's private lives as much as possible right now. Maybe later when I think I have something useful to contribute in those areas, I'll shift.

I think having everything being open and collaborative helps a lot with filter bubbles.

Do you like pineapple pizza?

Yes.

Do you worry that WT.Social is not a very catchy name?

Kind of? It's short though, and it's memorable. So, there's that.

I'm not an advertising jingle kind of guy.

I think the length and lack of an obvious shorthand are going to be a problem. It's six syllables, half of which are comprised by the "W". Facebook and Twitter are two, and people shorten Instagram to "Insta" (also two). In the case of social media, the name is a major usability factor.

I'm with you. But I have to start my journey from where I am. :)

I really like how you touch on current social media models not being democratic at all, can you touch on how you would ensure that isn't the case on WT.social?

Well, everything is collaboratively editable and that's a huge start.

But we're designing things from scratch, so there's much to be figured out.

Any plans to decentralize data? I think the biggest problem with a lot of social media today is you get locked in because you can't take your followers or friends with you. It gives the platform complete control over you and potentially your career. Would like to see some effort towards decentralizing this.

Yes. I mean, not right away, not first thing, but I'm 100% for the ability to export data in a machine readable simple format.

I don't take any firm position on what the law ought to be in this area, I just make the observation that at least in Europe and possibly elsewhere, data portability is likely to be a legal requirement in a much bigger way in the future.

You are one of the few people that could push cryptocurrency into the mainstream.

My question, why have you not done this. Do you agree that cryptocurrency is a huge innovation, do you fear it? Why has wikimedia not fully adopted cryptocurrency?

I neither fear it nor am I particularly impressed. I'm not an expert so I'll just recommend my friend's book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts/dp/1974000060/ref=sr_1_5?qid=1575317791&refinements=p_27%3ADavid+Gerard&s=books&sr=1-5

Its super weird how life works. I was listening to your interview with guy raz yesterday.

You did mention that your partner had a plan similar to facebook. Like clasmates.com. Is this a branching of that plan or an entirely new idea based on your current studies of current social networks, primarily facebook?

Entirely new. And I'd say that a reaction to twitter is more like it.

But it's a lot of things that I've been thinking about for a long time.

Hi Jimmy, based on your (let’s say, charitably, wine induced) forays into fake news, what makes you think anyone will trust you to not fall into the exact same traps every other social network has done?

350,000 people have joined so far, so at least a few people seem willing to give it a shot.

But really, the key is the difference in business model. I believe incentives drive results.

You want me to trust you, Jimmy?

No, I want you to have the power to be a genuine participant in society.

Exciting project! You write that WT.social is an outgrowth of the WikiTribune. How exactly do these projects differ? Is WT.social still focused on news, or more personally oriented?

Still focussed on news but much more radically open and social.

Ok! Does that mean it won't be a place for old memes and youtube videos etc (at least in the foreseeable future)? I'm under the impression that those are the kind of things that primarily draw users to a social platforms, but I may be wrong. What is your impression?

Ok so - this is evolving but let me talk at some length about how I think about this. (The questions are slowing down now and this one is important so I'll devote more time.)

Think back to a traditional local newspaper in a reasonably large city. The big fat Sunday paper. That's a model for what belongs on WT - although because as we say in the Wikipedia world "wiki is not paper" you can also be more expansive. But I want to keep that "newspaper" model in mind to some extent.

So - a newspaper has (ideally) very straight factual news reporting. It has some political commentary - clearly marked as the opinion of the commentator. It has movie reviews. It has a gardening column. It has political cartoons - in a good paper they are interesting, funny, and not dishonest or racist, and it is possible to appreciate one that is of quality even if I disagree with it. It has comic strips. There's the sports section. There's a section on business. A section on personal finance.

It's a pretty interesting and diverse collection of things.

It doesn't have straight up porn. It doesn't have racist rants. It doesn't have a letters section where people heap abuse on each other for no good purpose.

Now, "wiki is not paper" means yeah, a video could be useful in some cases. Memes are like political cartoons - and some of them are good enough to be in a paper and some are racist and should be deleted and so on. Reviews are ok.

Basically the guiding principle for what gets promoted should be "this is quality" not "this leads people to spend more time on the site". Obviously it has to be good and interesting to be successful - but my view is that success should be measured by "At the end of the day, this is meaningful enough to my life that I'm happy to chip in and pay for it."

Will you comply with local/federal government programs that can demand user information? I have heard rumors on how the government subverts its own privacy and data collection laws by things like project prism as a legal loophole to collect citizen data, and AFAIK even companies like google and facebook comply with the government demands this way.

We'll have to obey the law where we operate (currently UK), but we will do everything that we can to minimize what data we give up.

If you haven't, you should take a look at Wikipedia's transparency report sometime. I think that's the right way to do it.

Shoes on or off when you’re in your house?

Generally off.

What were your biggest influences when designing the structure of the site? I'm not past the waiting list yet, but I'm noticing sub-wikis -- is this based on the reddit model? If so, how is this different than reddit?

Almost everything is collaboratively editable. So that's pretty different.

I tried to draw on the best things I (we) have learned from existing models - not everything is crap so yeah, there's a lot I learned from reddit.

Who the hell would ever want this? It's like you're trying to offer people a new social media site with the problems of social media ratcheted up to 11. Much less freedom, more group think, more hiveminding.

And you haven't even laid out clear rules or given clear answers as to what would be removed or deleted or censored, etc. That's what most people are demanding. Transparency and clear rules. I don't know what it means to have a social media site be community edited, but if it means what I think it means, it's an absolutely horrendous idea. All it will do is crush unpopular truths even harder. And if that's possible to do with your site, then obviously corporate and political shills will sink millions of dollars in to having powerful groups of "users" controlling everything.

You have solved literally no problems with social media at all, and from what I've read of your responses, you are actively increasing a lot of them.

This is a half-baked, terrible idea. Thanks, but no thanks, Jimmy.

It sounds like you and most people have very different ideas but ok.

It sounds like what I'm building won't suit your needs.

Can you please change your password requirements to be good? Requiring different character sets is an old best practice that doesn't actually help. Longer passwords are better than shorter passwords.

Personally I use xkcd's approach (correct horse battery staple) and despite having 20+ letters I need a capital to continue. You know what my first instinct is? Reuse that old password I use for all the sites with annoying character requirements. I closed that browser tab.

Having annoying password requirements hinders a variety of password schemes. It's especially upsetting that your minimal password length is only 6. 6 random characters from lower case, upper case, numbers, and symbols is mathematically just not as good as a password with 11 characters that are all lowercase. Bad password schemes make me not trust websites, especially websites that want my money.

I'm sorry, I already can't trust your new network.

It's a laravel default and I complained about it the first time I saw it. We were building a prototype on a very thin budget though, so we decided to ignore it for now.

Like you, I'm a correct horse battery stable kind of guy.

Do you believe copyright and similar rights should be abolished?

No, I think copyright is important. I think there is a great deal of overreach in copyright and that some reforms are needed but fundamentally I'm not opposed to copyright.

How can we mitigate for the echo chamber effect where we only hear what we want to hear, instead of people who are challenging our deeply held (but sometimes irrational) opinions?

I think many of us want that very much - to get out of our echo chambers. And I think it is possible to design for it.

I want to be shown things that I disagree with - but that are of quality. That's delicious.

Jimmy, I’m a huge fan of what you have created.... but how can Wikipedia and similar possibly continue to thrive when it depends on the kindness of strangers?

Only a tiny fraction of users will donate and only a fraction of them will donate enough to support their own level of search..... are you relying on an ultra rare altruistic class?

Wikipedia has millions of donors every year. People love it and they support it. So yeah, I think it will continue to thrive.

Where/how can i download the entire Wikipedia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download gives some helpful information.

What does WT stand for?

WikiTribune

Hi Mr Wales. How do you feel about the "war" on Wikipedia by academic institutions? Do you think students should be able to cite Wikipedia without penalty?

Actually many (most?) academics really love Wikipedia.

And I don't think at the University level (and probably not at high school level) it is appropriate to cite an encyclopedia in an academic paper. That just isn't the proper role of an encyclopedia in the research process!

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There will be an app when I can afford it. So, maybe early next year, I'm looking into it.

I think we will want to use location a little bit (with user permission of course) because it seems very useful in certain contexts. So I won't say absolutely not never ever. At the same time, I'm with you - a lot of the location tracking that's going on is pointless and invasive and I assume driven by advertising ideas.

One of the most censored groups accross the biggest social media sites (Facebook, instagram) are sex workers (in all capacities). Often their content is removed and censored for violating terms of service despite larger "influencer" accounts getting away with more serevely revealing content. On instagram it has gotten to the point where SWs can't promote their business sites such as onlyfans without receiving post removals or shadowbans. How will your social platform represent this community going forward?

Follow up question: often not, racist, homophobic, posts/pages are often reported and not deemed as being a violation of use. Facebook in particular is bad for this with several comments I've reported using the N word as a slur have not been deleted. How will you strive to ensure your platform is free of racial bias?

Total smackdown on that kind of stuff is our basic policy.

But more importantly is empowering a good community of thoughtful people to have genuine control of their environment. There are no magic answers here, but I hear you.

Hey Jimmy,

Can we talk about your involvement with Kazakhstan and the government takeover of that wiki?

Remember, it's the one where you gave the "Wikipedian of the Year" award to a government employee?

Do you recall the speaking honorarium?

Not that you sound like the kind of person for whom the facts of reality are very interesting, but I've never had any speaking honorarium from Kazakhstan and I've never been to Kazakhstan.

Social Media outlet to counter fake news? As a growing news source, I'm in.

Welcome!

What happened to Impossible, The People's Operator, WikiTribune, you being involved in Lessig's presidential candidate run?

Why would you say you've spectacularly failed in everything since Wikipedia?

How much respect do the rank and file Wikipedians have for you?

What's the Laura Hale/Maria Sefidari story?

Impossible is very successful - we just had a great advisory board retreat to work on strategy for the future. There's an eclectic range of products ranging from consulting services to the Bond Touch Band ( https://www.bond-touch.com/ ) and so on. Lily and Kwame are dear friends.

The People's Operator failed. A painful episode.

WikiTribune is WT.Social.

Larry Lessig didn't become President, Donald Trump did. The world is the worse for it.

You forgot to mention Wikia/Fandom which is also massively successful and I'm the co-founder and on the board there.

So I don't think I've failed spectacularly at many things, but I actually do a speech about failure - because I think if you're a real entrepreneur at heart you're likely to try a lot of different things and a lot of them will fail. What have you failed at?