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glial

That last one is easy, at least: ban ad-driven social media as a business model.

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Ban algorithmic sort that favors engagement with partners' ads, and replace it with the superior chronological sort.

Being ad-driven is a red herring. Trolls were known to exist on totally non-commercial mailing lists.

Being pseudonymous is key, but it's also the valuable part.

Being ad-driven is an important component because a big part of the incentive to maximize engagement is to drive ad impressions. If social media companies were compensated in some other way, the content might be different.

There will always be trolls. What the ads fund are armies of cognitive scientists making you addicted in the name of “engagement” aka ad revenue, consequences be damned.

> Being pseudonymous is key, but it's also the valuable part.

That does not seem to be they key on Facebook.

I detest ad-driven models and especially ad-driven social media, but this could actually make the problem worse, unless they can profit by a different means. It takes tons of expensive resources and talent to identify, stop, and prevent information/psychological warfare campaigns like these in a haystack of hundreds of millions to billions of users, especially when your adversaries may be superpowers' world-class intelligence agencies and their affiliates, or dedicated intelligence firms like Cambridge Analytica.

It's hard enough for the existing companies. (And yes, I think they're genuinely trying. Or at least I think Twitter is.)

How about banning advertisements altogether?

Just in case you’re not trolling: this is an impossible ask. Advertising is a vital step in the success of a business and has been going on for literal millennia.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but this type of argument where I'm asked to care about someone's business model really unconvincing in general. Someone else telling me that they need something sketchy to make money isn't persuasive - it just makes them sketchy a business or person.

What I'm certain will never happen even though I think it would be great would be to ban any sort of emotional appeal whatsoever in advertising. It's just manipulative.

I agree with this sentiment. However, I think advertising is necessary because what if you want to make a be candy bar? How will people know about it? The flashy wrapper you put it in? A fancy end cap store display? A billboard outside the shop you sell in? A television promotional? Is Steve jobs talking about iPhones an ad? Is bill gates talking about diseases an ad for Microsoft because they are intrinsically linked? There's no easy way to articulate what should and shouldn't be allowed.

> There's no easy way to articulate what should and shouldn't be allowed.

Except for - businesses with users should operate through subscription revenue, rather than 3rd party ad revenue.

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

This makes the argument that the need to convey product information is now fully accomplished by search engines, and advertising only adds harm / manipulation.

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