Comment by b1daly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by b1daly | Hacker News Reader

I agree very much with the interviewee that Facebook is a cultural wasteland, that provides one of the most enervating experiences on the internet.

I think as a young person he doesn’t realize how it was a cultural anomaly that small time content producers could make money through independent production of mass media.

Historically, from the development of mass media as an actual business category, getting your content distributed at all was tightly controlled by corporate “gate keepers” and was frankly a far more limiting situation for content creators of all stripes.

I do find it remarkable that Facebook has figured out a way to obtain the vast majority of the add revenue for the content that streams through their platform.

There are some unique aspects to the current structure, compared to earlier media business structures, that come from the incredible scope these advertising driven platforms have built.

Ultimately, I do think it’s a “tragedy of the commons”situation, or at least a variation, where the market structure prevents optimal payments flowing to the creators, who are in fact appreciated by many. The only way around this would be some form of class organization by creators, a syndicate, Union, coop, cartel, something.

The problem is that such a structure will be worked around by the many hungry and talented people out there who will sacrifice far more than you can believe for the chance to practice their craft.

> ”I think as a young person he doesn’t realize how it was a cultural anomaly that small time content producers could make money through independent production of mass media. Historically, from the development of mass media as an actual business category...”

Perspective.

Take a step farther back, and look across a longer period of time, you’ll find that historically, there was no such thing as mass media. It’s the anomaly.

The norm through far more of human history has been ‘small time’ content producers making money through independent productions.

We have a recent blip where mass media has disrupted ten thousand years of indie artists and troupes. Ideally we figure out how to get back to art for art’s sake, instead of for ads.

I'm not saying the current system is perfect, but a lot of these "gate keepers" are performing useful functions. Particularly for things like books and movies a major publisher or distributor gives some level of quality assurance. They also handle a bunch of stuff that you wouldn't expect an author or independent filmmaker to be good at.

A good critic or festival programmer provides far more signal about quality than a publisher or distributor ever does.

Sometimes gatekeepers are providing specialized services that creators might not be good at or interested in.

In any event, Facebook manages to insert itself as a middle man while simultaneously lowering quality.

I meant that having a publisher or distributor provides a lower bound for quality, not that it indicates high quality. There's plenty of crap published by legitimate publishers and plenty of movies not worth watching. But the quality is even worse among the people who self-publish (talking about averages obviously, not outliers).

And for books critics typically only review books from established publishers. Films might be a bit better in terms of allowing unknown directors to be discovered because of independent film festivals, but the barrier to entry is obviously higher.

I agree about Facebook though.

> I think as a young person he doesn’t realize how it was a cultural anomaly that small time content producers could make money through independent production of mass media.

Yes, that's a really good point. And things seem to be heading back towards the status quo pretty quickly.

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