रहिमन जिह्वा बावरी
रहिमन जिह्वा बावरी
Platforms and Negative Network Externalities
Thanks for your love and wishes for Deepawali.
We are living in difficult times. Social distancing , reduced interactions with strangers and an uninterrupted access to social media has made us keyboard warriors on issues big and small. This has multiple unintended consequences ranging from blocking of each others’ social media accounts to criminal charges being filed against each other.
One serious unprecedented side effect has been complete strangers getting into fights with complete strangers over internet. I am reminded of this wonderful couplet by Rahim Das where he brings out the impact of uncontrolled speech on body of speaker.
रहिमन जिह्वा बावरी, कहिगै सरग पाताल.
आपु तो कही भीतर रही जूती सहत कपाल
-रहीम के दोहे
An easy transliteration is as follows- Human tongue is crazy. It can say stuff from heaven to hell. And after doing so, it goes inside the mouth, and the forehead gets beaten with shoes.
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DTW
During the Week, AirBnB filed for an IPO and set the ball rolling towards the final step of being a public company. Of course, this has sent shivers down the residents of popular tourist destinations as they dread newbie instagrammer tourists descending onto to their little nooks and disturbing the tranquility.
All of us understand and appreciate network effects- same side and cross side. The growing market valuation of BigTech firms can be attributed to investors looking for positive impact of growing network effects. It is also imperative that we start looking at the negative impact of network externalities to mitigate it and thus ensure a sustainable future. We could visualise negative impact of network effects through Community, Control and Content.
Communities are the first to suffer the negative network externalities. Home sharing platforms like AirBnB and booking.com bring tourists and home owners together but this has resulted in overcrowding in some residential communities. There have been cases of vandalism and unruly behaviour by tourists in the rental properties booked through such platforms. It has also made the living expenses in some tourist destination go out of control and reach for some long term tenants.
The cost for cities for some of these platforms is not accounted during the valuation process. We have seen the Bounce bikes being left at random places and being an eye-sore or a traffic hazard.
Control on platforms has gradually shifted to either obnoxious flame throwers or even worse to state authorities. We have seen some users acquiring undue influence and clout on social platforms and thus blocking new influencers to gain audience. Platforms emphasis on network effects through their recommendation engines works in super-users favour as they keep getting recommended to new users and this creates a virtuous cyclical network effect.
This has led to some of these power users becoming obnoxious public figures ready to bring their wrath onto independent but contrarian voices. There have been cases of twitter users being added to list and then trolled whenever they post content. While it is perfectly ok for people to not agree with you but some of the twitter users to go to extreme to spit venom on others if they do not conform to their point of view.
Content on platforms can be harmful through twin mechanisms of fraud and FOMO. Recent elections in USA have brought out the power of social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in causing irreparable harm to public trust and peace.
Social media platforms have tremendous negative externalities when they impose tremendous mental cost on both users and sometime non-users. Troll accounts fuelled by frenzy over even trivial issues bring venom and hatred irrespective of subject or individual.
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) takes a toll on young minds and has led to multiple instances of physical harm. Young impressionable minds are following the social media celebrities and attempting fatal stunts to garner social media attention.
Issue of fake reviews has troubling impact on the integrity and usefulness of platforms. Amazon etc have made numerous attempts to curb the fake reviews initiated by sellers and buyers on their platforms.
Most of the platform convey the perception that they are free for the users and hence Good for ALL. I go by an adage which says- If you are getting it for free then you are the product.
We have had too much focus on generating value for end users and investors of various platforms. This has generally resulted in adverse impact on gig workers and larger communities where these platforms function. It is time that the platforms start contributing to the welfare of PUBLICs.
OTW
Over the Weekend, both Archana and I felt proud to watch our daughter Aru host introductions and Q & A for the Weekly Webinar Beyond the Track by Hyderabad Runners. Aru’s guest for the webinar were artistic gymnast Aruna Reddy accompanied by her coach Manoj Rana. You can watch the video on the Hyderabad Runners Facebook Page link.
Aruna Reddy has overcome fear, endured pain and shown extreme patience during last 15 years to be the first Indian to win a medal in an individual event at the Gymnastics World Cup'18 – a win she dedicated to her late father. Her current coach and mentor Manoj Rana has a beautiful vision to make India a power in gymnastics and to introduce the sports as curriculum in schools to catch young talent.
I would like to quote this passage from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.
And a woman spoke, saying, "Tell us of Pain."
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
I Love You.
Shailendra
Good one, Sir. I think there is also a moral responsibility of the platforms to curate the content if they are mitigating the stuffs. Because we live in such a diverse society and culture, and more or less in family, in physical world parents try to curate the things as much as they can..... but in this digital era...,, my father might not be aware of what stuffs I might be watching ..... also hail to Incognito Mode, ... of whom parents are not aware, while children are.... So, curation of content should be there, along with warnings about the consequences it possess, which many of them are not doing just to ease their work and make more money out of it..... which is putting their customers life in danger..... and in long run they might loose customer because of some or the other reasons that you have above mentioned.
Very good read, sir. The sad truth is we live in a digital era, which is making this world more and more virtual. Though today's buzzwords are networking, collaboration and creating value, I don't find lot of instances of compassion, warmth and greater good or tolerance. Aren't they all the result of too much of capitalism or so-called networking? Could be an interesting topic, of where we stand today vs few decades back. World has changed so much since then. We do talk of improving the productivity but none of us have time in our lives, we do have tools of better connectivity, like WhatsApp, Facebook, etc but most of us are hardly connected in it's true sense. Human values have been overtaken in this era of bots and the so-called concept of 'creating value for all stakeholders'. Really, all stakeholders'? At times, I wonder what our next generation will eventually experience. Your article has triggered lot of thoughts now. And most likely, in a bit, I will go and scroll through my images I have shot over the period of time, to enjoy the real beauty of this real world. 'Thoda sa sukoon'