Episode 147 - Joining Locals, Media Decline, and Digital Detox
Have you been thinking about switching to alternative social media platforms or taking a digital break? Our lives have become so intertwined with technology and social media that all the information can become overwhelming, more so when the information is toxic. Now, at the end of a rough year, it's essential to keep our mental health in good shape — like with a digital detox.
In this episode, Max and Aaron talk about the current social media landscape and the benefits of alternative platforms. The Local Maximum community has found a home in Locals, where the platform employs a bottom-up approach for its communities. They also honor the death of Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, who paved the way for online commerce. Toward the end, they discuss practical methods of starting a digital detox and why you should start one.
Tune in to the episode to learn more about the direction of social media!
Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
Understand the current social media landscape.
Explore alternative social media platforms like Locals.
How can we start our digital detox plan?
Resources
Sign up for free here to join the Local Maximum community! You can also support the show further by giving $4/month for additional behind-the-scenes content. For a short period, you can use the promo code ‘thanksgiving’ to become a supporter for free!
XKCD on how information spreads during an earthquake
Diaspora, the do-it-all, distributed open-source social network
Sen. Coons questions Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey - November 17, 2020
Tony Hsieh, Longtime Chief of Zappos, Is Dead at 46 by Glenn Rifkin on The New York Times
It’s Time for a Digital Detox. (You Know You Need It.) by Brian X Chen on The New York Times
Related Episodes
Episode 9 on Fixing Facebook (advice in 2018 that no one took)
Episode 12 with Marissa Chacko on virtual friends and enemies
Episode 25 on the Source of Tech Giant Bias and Censorship
Episode 61 with Michael Bronspigel on Facebook’s Group Policies
Episode 70 on the Podoverse
Episode 103 with Dave Rubin on Locals
Episode 147 with Tai Danae Bradley
Episode Highlights
The Decline of Social Media
Twitter used to be a platform for breaking news, but Max notes that most of the communication on Twitter has been trash talk.
It helps to think about whether the quality of information dropped or if this is a signal-to-noise problem.
You need to listen to many accounts to get the full conversation.
Twitter is also used to spread information quickly — even faster than an earthquake's shockwave.
Negative Trends of Facebook
In the last couple of years, Facebook has tried to monetize communities on the platform.
People have been predicting the death of Facebook since 2005.
In a decade where alternative social media platforms have risen, Facebook might finally die.
The Local Maximum Joins Locals
Locals, launched by Dave Rubin, is an alternative to both Facebook groups and Patreon.
You can join The Local Maximum community at https://maximum.locals.com/ and sign up for a free membership!
The platform uses a bottom-up approach where there are local rules across small communities.
Locals has a wide range of demographics.
Listen to the full episode to learn more about the perks of joining the Local Maximum community and how you can support the podcast!
Goals of The Local Maximum Podcast
The podcast aims to give people the tools to educate and advocate for themselves.
Another goal is to give experts a forum and platform, especially experts who are “in the trenches.”
Bayesian inference is at the core of the podcast. This powerful tool should be more widely used for better critical thinking.
With Max and Aaron’s background, they can facilitate a technical interview with guests compared to mainstream journalism.
Structures within Social Media
Max's ideal setup for social media is to have each social media community set its own rules — the bottom-up approach.
However, several platforms opted for the top-down approach, where a small committee decides what can be published or not.
Reddit has a comparatively bottom-up approach in addition to their sitewide rules.
With the top-down approach, people who control social media companies can spread certain ideologies and narratives.
Remembering Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
Zappos is an American shoe selling company established in the late 1990s when online commerce was not yet widespread.
Tony Hsieh brought innovation to online commerce and has been an inspiration to many.
He recently died at the age of 46 due to a house fire.
Importance of Digital Detox
A lot of people have started to take Internet addiction seriously and how to cut back usage.
People have different triggers to stop using social media.
Whatever your trigger, do not second guess your decision.
We used to live in a period where trivia knowledge was valuable, but now everything is an Internet search away.
Steps to Start Your Digital Detox
Remember that not all screen time is unhealthy.
First, assess what screen time activities make you unhappy.
Create a realistic plan to minimize the consumption of toxic screen time.
Treat screentime like candy that is an occasional treat.
Listen to the full episode for more tips on reducing your screen time!
5 Powerful Quotes from This Episode
“The first step in Bayesian inference is to generate all the possible hypotheses, all the possible answers. That requires strong freedom of thought and freedom of speech to get to the truth.”
“You also have to give people credit for coming up with the theory that turns out to be correct. People who think on that creative level are also bringing a tremendous amount of knowledge into the world.”
“(Bayesian inference) allows somebody else who might have some slightly different priors to use that as a framework and extract a lot more value from it; rather than just looking at it and saying, ‘well, this is the final answer. Either I agree with it, or I don't; they got it right or they got it wrong’.”
“Whatever the trigger event is to help you re-examine your digital behavior - take advantage of it, don't second guess it too much.”
“There was a period of our lives where knowledge of trivia was a valuable skill; and then it stopped mattering, because everything was a Wikipedia lookup away.”
Enjoy the Podcast?
Are you hungry to learn more about the social media landscape? Do you want to expand your perspective further? Subscribe to this podcast to learn more about A.I., technology, and society.
Leave us a review! If you loved this episode, we want to hear from you! Help us reach more audiences to bring them fresh perspectives on society and technology.
Do you want more people to understand social media? You can do it by simply sharing the takeaways you've learned from this episode on social media!
You can tune in to the show on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Stitcher. If you want to get in touch, visit the website, or find me on Twitter.
To expanding perspectives,
Max
Transcript
Max Sklar: You're listening to The Local Maximum Episode 147.
Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to The Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max Sklar: Welcome everyone, you've reached another Local Maximum. And today, of course, I am joined once again by Aaron. Aaron, how you doing?
Aaron: I'm doing pretty well. Coming out of a long holiday week, or at least it was for me.
Max: I was going to say, I've been told, don't do too much banter. But this is a holiday week. We've got a banter about that.
Aaron: Yes, it was nice. It was a relief. The dread for going back, maybe started a little too early. But we'll talk about maintaining sanity a little bit later.
Max: For me, I feel like there's this feeling that the year is winding down. And even this podcast episode is going to be a little bit more relaxed, which I'm excited about. Although we do have a very exciting announcement today in The Local Maximum, but it is going to be more relaxed. And I feel like we're going to have some in end-the-year-look-back episodes. And hopefully, I don't know if 2020 has one last zinger for us. I feel like it might.
Aaron: Yes, you don’t tempt the stakes.
Max: Yes, no, I'm pretty sure it does.
Aaron: 2020 heard that and now they're saying “Hold my beer.”
Max: No, I'm not. But right now, we'll see what happens. I can't even begin to speculate. All right.
So, let's start by—before we get into our big announcements today. Let's start by talking about the current state of social media. I don't know if you guys have noticed this. Aaron, you obviously have not noticed this because you are one of the few people on earth who—not only are you not on Twitter and Facebook, but you haven't been—how long have you been sober?
Aaron: I guess it's coming up on five years in January or December maybe.
Max: So, you missed the worst of it. And you might be the last...
Aaron: And that’s was when I left Facebook, I’ve never been on Twitter. Although I have to admit, I do occasionally lurk there.
Max: Yes, okay. Okay. So, as a result, you may be the last sane person on earth.
Aaron: Compared to what?
Max: I’m just going to throw that out there. So, it's hard to put this, I can't quantify it. But I've just noticed that Twitter is just even more trash than it's been in the past. It is just full of it. Used to be back in the heyday, people would break news on Twitter. That doesn't seem to be happening anymore. It just seems to be all trash talk. There was always some trash talk on Twitter. It seems to be all trash talk. And it's getting dumber and dumber and more aimed at—I don't know, is it bots talking for bots?
Is it aimed at getting people hooked? Is it people trying to run up their like numbers and just not breaking news? Is it because our news sources are so bad? I don't know. But if you go on right now, it just feels like trash. I can't get away from that.
Aaron: I won't begin to know how to analyze this. But the question that comes to mind is, has the actual level of discourse or the quality of information dropped? Or is this simply a signal noise problem that all the good stuff that was on there before is still there, it's just so hard to find it because there's a lot more other junk now that everybody and their crazy uncle is on Twitter and they have no compulsion about just removing the filter between your brain and keyboard.
Max: I mean, some people have suggested start fresh and just follow a few people. I could try that but I feel like it wouldn't quite work. If you're on Twitter, you want to have the full conversation. You're not just there to like follow a few people's streams.
Aaron: Yes, I mean, that's the impression I've gotten that a lot of celebrities or people of note do that, that they simply don't see everything that gets retweeted or tweeted at them, that it's kind of a one way valve for them for the most part, which I can imagine being otherwise.
Max: Yes. Well, a lot of what Twitter is though—a lot of it is not people you follow, a lot of it is breaking news stories and trying to search for them. Like I remember in 2011 when there was the earthquake, it was in Virginia, but we felt it in Manhattan. And you go on Twitter, and you get all the updated things about the earthquake or what was going on with Hurricane Sandy and all that. And now it's just that search button is there in the—I don't want to say the swamp because that's the talking about like the...
Aaron: That has a political connotations.
Max: Yes, yes. But you're in the depths of the internet, no matter what news story you're searching for, and you're not quite getting the same value.
Aaron: I don’t know if it was the particular earthquake, but I remember there was an XKCD comic where he talked about a particular earthquake and how the information about it traveled faster than the speed of...
Max: By the way, there’s a reason why we're talking about this stuff. So hang on. Okay, sorry, sorry, go ahead.
Aaron: Trust us, we're going somewhere with this.
It was a measurement of the rate at which the—I guess the shock wave of the earthquake—actually propagated from the epicenter, and then contrasted with a measurement of how the information about that earthquake radiated from the epicenter. And there was a clear point at which the information about the earthquake overtook the actual shockwave.
So people would, there were some places where people would learn, “Oh, there's an earthquake coming,” and then the earthquake would come, which is kind of mind boggling.
Max: Yes, yes, I remember that one very well, but I don't want to get into the whole story now.
So let's talk about Facebook now. Facebook's interesting. I've looked at—again, maybe I can start over maybe with the help, but I think maybe a few of my friends in Facebook are smart. I feel like the whole Facebook group things where you have your join groups of like-minded people, and you have discussions that feels in decline.
I'm in a podcasters group, for example, a lot of group leaders, your admins or the people who created the group are saying that now Facebook is requiring them to approve of all the posts on the group, which like puts them on the hook for it. So that feels a little weird.
Aaron: I hadn't heard much about that. But I know in the last couple of years that Facebook has moved to trying to extract some form of monetization out of groups where if you want your reach for posts, even within your groups to get visibility beyond a very small core of people, you got to pony up.
Max: Right. So I think the friends and family no longer share photos on Facebook as much. It's really—it's mostly like uninteresting junk at this point, with a few things that are okay. So, I mean, look, it feels like a nation in decline—the Facebook nation.
Aaron: I feel like LinkedIn is stuck in the same place, just with a slightly different flavor to it.
Max: Maybe, yes, I haven't even looked at LinkedIn for this. So I really think that this decade, the 2020s, when the alternatives are finally going to rise, people have been predicting the death of Facebook since—honestly, since 2005, since before they even got off the ground. So, I've been careful to make those predictions but it does feel like this is finally the turning point. This is finally where it feels so, so old, these forms of media and something has to replace.
Alternatives have been tried for a long time and have failed. One of them was Diaspora, which was like this decentralized social network that was founded at NYU, actually, when I was there in 2010. I mean I still think it's still around, but it didn't work out. So, it's been my contention kind of they were just early, and in the world of tech startups they say early is wrong. But it still means that maybe they were 10 years early. So it's definitely, the prospect of starting alternative in 2020 is a lot different than the prospect of starting alternative in 2010. In 2010, Facebook is really just getting started and Twitter was just getting started. Twitter hasn't even had it’s own moment...
Aaron: With a lot of that, whether it's a question of the timing was off, or the fundamental idea was wrong, without hindsight, until it's actually panned out, it's very difficult to make that call one way or the other.
Max: Yes. So anyway, my point is I've tried to do some Local Maximum stuff on Facebook and Twitter, I don't really take to it. I don't want to post too much on Twitter because then I get comments that are maybe—I've got some good comments, but then you get comments from the universe that are not necessarily something I want to deal with.
Aaron: And that platform is not really—regardless of what it's designed for, it does not blend itself to discussion and delving into issues. It's very much for...
Max: “Hey, I have a new episode!”
Aaron: ...voice things zingers at each other or yes, quick little update like that. Yes, great for that, if you're literally using it as kind of like a ticker news feed almost. But beyond that, it tends to fall apart.
Max: There's something about Facebook where I felt like I was getting lost in the shuffle too. Even though I'll still continue to post to those things, but forming a community on those, I actually think it's a good time to jump ship right now. So, are you ready for the announcement?
Aaron: Drumroll please.
Max: Right. We have been approved, you have to get approved by the admins for that to get a to form a community on Locals, locals.com. If you remember, I had Dave Rubin on the show back in Episode 103 and he was talking about launching this alternative—it's kind of a mixture between an alternative to both Facebook groups and Patreon. So you'll be able to subscribe to The Local Maximum group without paying and I'll post a lot of this stuff for free. But there will be a tier to help people support the show as well. And I thought it was a great idea, it's still very small. So hey, it might be fun to join something as small, kind of get into the ground level, and see what happens.
So I want to talk about some of the reasons why I chose this particular platform, there are a bunch of reasons. First of all, one because I had Dave on the show which I already said. Secondly, it's because they gave me the URL maximum.locals.com. So to get to The Local Maximum community, all you have to go is to is maximum.locals.com. How cool is that URL?
Aaron: Yes, that's pretty slick.
Max: Yes, yes. I thought I was going to get maxed.locals.com, I think they are like “Don't push it, Max.” But maximum.locals.com is pretty good. I kind of like the bottom up philosophy idea. I feel like the app is very bare bones right now. There's a lot of stuff that I wish can be done that they haven't done yet. I'm sure they'll build more stuff into it. But it feels like the different communities don't collide with each other that much.
So, it's like if you want to hear from me and this group, this community of people who listen to the show, and I think we have a small community. So it'll be like me and Aaron for the most part, and a few other people. Then you can subscribe to it either on your phone or on your desktop. And you don't really have to—like the other communities on Locals, if you don't want them kind of seeping into the discussion, you don't really have to, I mean, you could subscribe to other ones.
Aaron: Certainly, I've only been in there for a little while now since we've been in kind of the pre-launch mode this past week. But I don't think I've received a single spammy email from either locals.com, itself or from other locals. So it's as expensive or as isolated as you want to make it.
Max: Yes. And another reason why I chose Locals is also because of the makeup of the people who are joining. So we talk about alternatives. Now obviously, Dave Rubin given the types of stuff that he's been advocating for, he is very concerned about censorship on the web and on a big tech and I am as well, we talked about it a lot. But I want to be careful like which groups—sometimes these anti-censorship groups tend to attract people who are being censored for a reason. I don't want to say it in a way that's like pro censorship but okay. So yes, for example...
Aaron: Generally it's a good sign if you have people participating in the platform from across the spectrum. If it was if it was all crazy right wingers or all crazy socialists, then that would probably be a signal for something. And it would give you pause perhaps but it seems like there's a pretty wide spectrum of locals that make up the locals.com meta community.
Max: Yes, so I mean, I looked at Gab, but those are like Nazis. I'm probably generalizing too much.
Aaron: But you have personal experience with Gab Nazis?
Max: Yes, I don't want like—look, I don't want a debate. But there's an open discussion, but there's certain theses that you shouldn't have to debate. Like if there's a flat earth try to convince you that there's a flat earth, why should I have to debate them for hours on end and have them ruin my day when I know they're full of it. So there does have to be a rule of like who you're going to let into, I think is Dave Rubin, you say who would you let into your home?
And then there's Parler, which a lot of people are joining right now, which is an alternative to Twitter. But that for now seems to be a lot of like, kind of Republican red meat type people, Boomer cons. I don't know if Sean Hannity is on Parler, but that kind of is the type of person that I imagine is on there.
So far, Local seems like more of an eclectic group. They're kind of independent thinkers. I think it's better—doesn't mean I endorse everyone on the platform, doesn't mean I'm going to like everyone on the platform. I'm sure—I haven't seen anyone on vocal say something that is horrifying yet, but I'm sure there are and I'm sure there will be. But that's the point. That's cool, it won't affect us.
Aaron: And you mentioned bottom up before. So what does that mean in this context? Is this essentially that you've got the power to moderate your own local, but that there's very little hands on in that nature from the people at locals calm themselves or?
Max: Yes, it's kind of rather than throw everyone together. It's kind of like, let's have some local rules, and then see how we can combine these small communities together sort of a thing. It’s like creating a bunch of city states and trying to create a nation versus...
Aaron: Yes, I was thinking of the metaphor for the laboratory, for the states, for the states for the laboratory of democracy.
Max: Versus conquering like Alexander the Great style, like conquering the unknown world, and then dividing it up into countries as you see fit. It's like the opposite. So it's that sort of idea.
Okay, and they also have an easy way to help listeners support the show. So, I'm setting supporters' fee at $4 a month. I think—well, we're going to talk about reasons to support the show in a minute. But first of all, I want to point out, if you are getting value out of the show, and you've been listening for a while, and you like what I'm doing here, first things first, just go on maximum.locals.com and subscribe for free. Those numbers, I want to get up because that's kind of more important right now. So don't focus too much on the paid support, although I would obviously appreciate that.
But first of all, I'm not exactly sure what you're going to get as extras, I think we're going to post some behind the scenes stuff. Maybe some unedited videos of the podcast that we do. I'm going to talk about progress. I’m going to talk about certain things that I might want to share with a smaller audience about where I'm taking the show and that sort of thing. And so, you can be part of that discussion.
And then of course, if you sign up for free, you can kind of see the larger thoughts that I have, that I feel comfortable posting there and not on Twitter because I'm not going to have millions of people throw peanuts at me or something like if you just make a comment on Twitter. And so, okay, so I think that makes sense. I know I'm not the best sales guy in the world. But does that make sense, Aaron?
Aaron: Yes. So there's the opportunity to sign up for free and get a peek behind the curtain kind of and get involved. And if you're interested in stepping up to the—what is it the supporting member level?
Max: Yes.
Aaron: Right now, there's just the one fairly low tier for that and that gets you access to a little bit more, and we'll see how that develops.
Max: Yes, yes. So I want to talk about a little bit first of all, like, where does the money go, right now. It's not going into my pocket, it's we've got hosting costs. I'm transcribing the episodes, which make them much more searchable, and make all of this information available more broadly. And so, it's going into that and the website and the audio production and things like that. Right now, I'm not covering costs on that. So right now, you're supporting, like, directly what we do here. But this whole thing, like they'd be thinking like, what is the point of the show? What is the improvement that The Local Maximum is putting out?
Aaron: And this is something we’ve talked—we’ve revisited a couple of times since before the first episode launched, it's been kind of a recurring self-examination here.
Max: Right? I mean this—so we do a lot of stuff on the show, and we kind of go back and forth through a lot of things. I have some bullet points here. Let's go through them.
First of all, I think some of what I do is giving people the tools to educate themselves and advocate for themselves. I know my particular background is in machine learning and Bayesian inference and sort of you and I have particular ways of looking at things. So, it's not completely, but it's sort of a point of view that you probably don't get from, like mainstream or like partisan sources, but it's sort of like very helpful tools to kind of do critical thinking.
It's a little cliche to say, like, we teach you how to think not what to think. But, it's not that we don't give our opinions here. But like, I think that there are a lot of tools and gems here, particularly—that just when we say with our guests that can help you think differently, get out of your local maximum. That's the point.
Another thing I was thinking about what this show is, it's like a forum for people in the tech industry, a forum for people in software. It's a forum for people doing research, just to like talk about their ideas and talk about what they're working on and have kind of a back and forth. And it's something that a lot of other interview shows don't do. Like, it's sometimes I interview people that get a lot of interviews, but other times they interview people who maybe don't get a lot of interviews, but are doing some cool stuff nonetheless.
So I think that's a huge benefit. I also use it to forward my own kind of research in understanding of AI and tech and what's working, what's not working. And as you know, I think a lot of people with podcasts just like to talk about stuff. And that's it. They're their talkers. But I actually like to act on some of this stuff, like, I have a job. I have kind of research interests beyond that. And I think sometime in the future, I'm going to have like, way more freedom in terms of what I work on. But already I have a lot of freedom.
Aaron: There's almost a little bit of a paradox in there. And that the people who are actually doing the most interesting work in AI, they're too busy doing that work to be out evangelizing about it. And so, it matters to get some viewpoints from people who are, “in the trenches,” rather than kind of professional advocates for the field type thing.
Max: Yes. And somehow I've managed to talk about it while sometimes being in the trenches, I think the trenches I'm in are not the craziest trenches, where maybe it would be possible to do this show. But nonetheless, I think it's kind of a unique thing that we've got here.
There are some things we advocate for. I definitely advocate for freedom of thought and freedom of speech and Bayesian inference. I feel like the first step in Bayesian inference is to generate all of the—when you're tackling a certain problem—is to generate all the possible hypotheses, all the possible answers. And I think that requires strong freedom of thought and freedom of speech to get to the truth.
And it's something that a lot of people just don't get nowadays, and it's frustrating. And I think that there are people who are advocating for it on the political scene very well. But I think you just have to have as many people advocating for it as possible. At some point, we're going to have to engage people who don't quite believe in it, because I think it's, it's going to be the downfall of us all if we lose that.
Aaron: In the context of Bayesian inference and Bayesian thought. Even if the outcome is that you put the probability of something at zero percent, having a transparent discussion with yourself about, “Am I doing this? Why am I really setting this at zero? Am I lying to myself when I do that?” And after you've made that assessment, maybe you do land at the same place. But having that internal monologue is valuable? And there are a lot of things that could be missed by skipping over that step just because well, everybody knows x, or of course, y. And you can, yes, that could leave you stuck in a local maximum.
Max: I'm more and more convinced. So one of the things that we want to give people credit for is how well they predict things and because you have a lot of pundits out there, and they make predictions, but it seems like those predictions have no accountability to what actually happens. And so that’s got to happen for one.
But on top of that, I'm more and more coming to the conclusion that you also have to give people credit for coming up with the theory that turns out to be correct. Even if you say that this theory is like, “Oh, this is an interesting idea. I don't think it's going to happen. But this is an interesting idea that I came up with.” People who think on that creative level are also bringing a tremendous amount of knowledge into the world. I don't think I've explored that 100%. But I think that's something that people should be encouraged to do as well.
Aaron: I think there's a lot of value in that whether we're talking about political polling or something else that kind of showing the work and the underlying structure.
Max: It’s just a different way of looking at something. Yes.
Aaron: It allows somebody else who might have some slightly different priors to use that as a framework and extract a lot more value from it, rather than just looking at it and saying, “Well, this is the final answer, either I agree with it, or I don't, or they got it right or they got it wrong.”
Max: Yes. What else do we do here in The Local Maximum? We have access to guests you won't get anywhere else. Dave Rubin, he has gotten on the show, he didn't know this. But look, even when I interviewed him, I had a different—like everyone else just wants to talk about the political stuff. No, I've been inside the tech startup, and I was talking to him about doing that. And I don't think anyone else has interviewed him about that, which is crazy.
So look, I think a good example of an interview I did was like, well, the last one Tai-Danae Bradley, I don't know if you listened to that one.
Aaron: Absolutely.
Max: Yes. So, the mathematician. She does a lot of stuff on like YouTube and stuff. So you could hear from her. But you don't really get kind of—a journalist can't really go into enough depth with someone like that because they don't really get what's going on. So and then, of course, you have the people at Foursquare. I feel like there are some areas where I have a good insider view that you can't get anywhere else.
And I just think we have general education on current events, with kind of light technical background that everyone can have access to. So yes, I like you said, Aaron, interesting conversations on interesting topics. What can go wrong with that?
I do need a better elevator pitch here because there's so many reasons why we do The Local Maximum. And I need a really short—and I'm really bad at this. I need like a really short two sentence thing that people are going to reread and they're going to be like, “Yes, I'm in this group. I want to go to maximum.locals.com and sign up right now.”
Aaron: Yes, we got to keep working on fine tuning that. But at the same time, being in an elevator with someone right now is mildly terrifying.
Max: The idea that—there is not a zoom elevator. It's like a “boop” when you're with someone before the rest of—forget it.
Aaron: The Zoom lobby?
Max: Yes. If there's anyone out there who is good at marketing and getting these elevator pitch together, I would like to know if you have a good idea. So, I'd like to hear from you on that. So anyway, that's it.
Aaron: Like the Mark Twain quote that I would have written you a short letter, but I didn't have time. So I've written you a long one instead. So we've given you the long spiel on what we're about and what our value proposition is.
Max: Yes. Oh, but it's terrible. I know, people are like, browsing, locals.com, and The Local Maximum now will come up. But then I have this whole big paragraph of why you should join. And I'm like, nobody's going to read that paragraph, they're going to look at the paragraph, they're going to be like, “Ah, let me see the next one.” And then they'll open up like Michael Malice and we'll say, for the LOLs, and the people be like, “Oh, yes, I'm in for the LOLs.”
So I need something a little better. But I think we'll have to figure it out. That's one thing that I'm a little bit of a blind spot, it's on the podcast market. We’ll get...
Aaron: And the maximum.locals.com it's going to be a place where we can maybe go beyond what you might be able to do by sending an email into the show. There's a place for back and forth dialogue, both between you and me as hosts and co-hosts and the listeners, but also potentially directly between the listeners themselves as part of the community.
Max: Yes, yes, that that will be fun. That'll be pretty awesome, when we have more people in. My first goal is to get 100 subscribers. So if you do subscribe, even for free, you're going a long way to getting me there. I think we can get that with this audience but we'll see.
All right. So, I think that's all I have on that. Remember, maximum.locals.com please sign up. Sign up today. Especially first of all, it's a no brainer to sign up for the free one and help out with the show. Because that's not no skin off your back. And then if you do support the show, very appreciative. And you can even become a supporter for free if you use the promo code “Thanksgiving” . That'll be up for a bit.
All right, back to the social landscape of big tech and all of the people who control the information and what's going on. In 2018, I recommended a bottom up model for community moderation and truth finding. I think it was Episode 7, it was like, it was called, Fixing Facebook.
Aaron: That's way back.
Max: No, no, Episode Nine. Episode Nine was on Fixing Facebook. Let's write that down for the show notes page. And these companies since then, since 2018, it's been two and a half years, have done the exact opposite of everything that I suggested. It's almost like they weren't listening.
So I recommended—I don't deny that you need some way to kind of get to filter out crap. Everybody knows that. But I suggested kind of a bottom up way of doing it where different groups of people can come up with different filters and there could be competition for censors, essentially. But nope, these companies decided, “Hey, we're going to have a small committee at the top decide what's good to publish, and what not good to publish.” And the results have just been absolutely horrible. I mean, even if you kind of agree with what they're doing, I don't see how you could think that state of affairs is any good, but maybe I'll talk to someone who thinks that at some point.
Aaron: I would say that one of the places on the internet where it seems like they've embraced more—at least more of a bottom up approach that comes to mind is Reddit. And granted, they've got some community standards that apply sitewide...
Max: But they've banned whole communities, too.
Aaron: Yes, and there has been that. But within a certain leeway, there's certainly some stuff that would get you thrown out of, banned from one subreddit, that is perfectly acceptable in another. And so there's some kind of diversity of communities from that perspective there.
Not a not a perfect model by any means. But very different than what you're seeing on Facebook or Twitter, which because of the kind of the single global organism, nature of the platforms, they seem to be searching for a one size fits all set of rules. And that’s a much different challenge.
Max: Another point that I wanted to make, and this one is going to be another kind of evolution that I've had since 2008. I thought—like a lot of conservatives claim that they're being banned or censored or shadow banned by these companies. And I thought that was kind of overblown. I actually thought it was either maybe some of these people were just not very good at social media, and they're like, “Why don't I have any followers? It must be that they're out to get me.”
Aaron: That's certainly a tempting narrative to adopt when it's the person saying it is like a 60 or 70 year old senator or representative. Do you even internet bro?
Max: Yes. And also, I'm trying to find the episode where we talked about that. But I thought it was like, well, yes, the people at these companies have a particular point of view. So, maybe they're helping the people who agree with them more just because that's who they know versus it being kind of a systematic attempt to spread an ideology by the people who are controlling these companies. But now it's becoming more and more clear that that's exactly what it is. In 2020, versus in 2018.
I mean, Episode 61, I spoke to Michael Bronspigel about his group that got torpedoed by Facebook. But now in 2020, we've just seen it go full sail. I actually don't think it's really conservatives that are being censored so much. It's just whoever happens to be against whatever narrative they're trying to portray at that particular time. They really like to have that editorial control, and they're not really the types of people—maybe there was a time when I can trust where you could trust like the professional standards of journalism, that doesn't seem to be something that people follow anymore.
Aaron: Yes, the industry at large has not been covering itself in glory there. It's been getting down in the mud and wrestling with everybody else.
Max: Right. So some of the congressional testimony recently, I'm not going to go through all this, but the only one I want to do is this one question that Senator Chris Coons from Delaware gave to Jack Dorsey as you know, CEO of Twitter. And he's obviously proud of this one. I mean, it's posted on his—I'm linking to his Senator Coons’ own YouTube channel.
So he basically said, “Hey, Mr. Dorsey, you already blocked out deep fakes. You blocked out COVID misinformation? Why the heck don't you block out climate change misinformation?” All right, kind of almost has a kind of logic to it. The answer is, “Oh, we're just getting started. Yes, we're focusing on a few main areas right now to prioritize, but we're going to get to all of it.”
So, I mean, my first part was, I thought that the narrative was that climate change is going to entail the extinction of humanity. So, you think if they prioritize, they might want to put that one first. But no...
Aaron: I have some cynical takes on that, but I'll put that in my back pocket.
Max: Well, you could say what you want to say when I finish this, I just think it's interesting. No, they want to control the narrative on every issue down the line. Ultimately, that's really where they're going. Again, Jack Dorsey, I don't think that's why he got into this thing but he's been forced to go along with this anyway, and so that's what he's telling Congress. And so that's essentially where these platforms are going.
And it's basically going to be a—I don't know—it's going to be an information mill for establishment sources. I mean, you could kind of be rhetorical and say, “This is going to be like the Soviet Pravda of websites,” or something like that. Maybe that is where it's going. But I don't know, it's not going to be the free speech haven that they originally envisioned.
Aaron: Yes, I think it's, it's going to become more and more like...
Max: I mean it already is not.
Aaron: The long established journalistic outlets have become, but without any of the redeeming qualities that they might still have.
Max: Yes. All right. So fortunately, the podaverse of podcasts shows no signs of being centralized. So, if you listen to podcasts, you're in luck, none of this is happening. All right, so I have a couple of news stories. One heavy that we're going to go very quickly through and then one very light to finish out the episode. What do you say about that?
Aaron: Let's do it.
Max: Okay, so the one I wanted to mention first, the kind of heavy one is Tony Hsieh, who was the founder of Zappos, which was the online shoe selling company, he died, very young age of 46 due to complications from a house fire, very sad story. There's not much that I can say about it but his story is very interesting, because he started—Zappos has been around for a long time. This is like a..
Aaron: Early 90s?
Max: Late 90s.
Aaron: Late 90s?
Max: I don't think people were selling stuff online in the early 90s.
Aaron: He was a pioneer, yes.
Max: Late 90s and early 2000s. Yes, yes. And he cracked internet commerce early on when it really wasn't being done very successfully. And he moved his company to Las Vegas instead of San Francisco, which raised a lot of eyebrows. This is if you're interested in this story, I suggest that you, you do a little bit more research on it. But this name, Tony Hsieh is someone who is—obviously I hadn't heard of him before. But he's obviously someone who is inspiring to a lot of people. There's been a great outpouring of support and stuff from people I know. And so or just eulogizing.
But his story is very interesting. He did something pretty incredible at a very young age. And it's sad that he died at such a young age as well. But also, I didn't think to look at the shoe seller for some innovation, but sometimes that's where that's where it lies.
Aaron: Yes. Well, and I don't think anyone was banking on the fact that a bookseller would become the online retail behemoth that it is today.
Max: Yes, yes. I mean, there are parallels between this and Amazon for sure.
Okay, then the second one. This one's a little bit lighter. And so, we'll finish off with this, end the year, Thanksgiving.
In New York Times there’s an article saying that it's time for a digital detox, obviously, related to a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today. The article was written by Brian X. Chen. I think it’s kind of cool to have X as your middle initial. Otherwise, I don't know anything about this author. But yes, I think a lot of people this year in 2020 are starting to take internet addiction seriously. I mean, there have always been people who take it seriously. But I think there's been kind of a turning point on this, and people are talking about, how do we cut back?
Aaron: Part of me wants to be cynical, it's like, “Oh, now that the election is over, now we can have our digital detox.” You couldn't have try to improve people's mental health in the state of discourse back in—I don't know, October? But I'm willing to grant that...
Max: I mean, it's not this guy's fault.
Aaron: No, no.
Max: He’s writing the article.
Aaron: And if this is something that's going to help people with their state of mind—what's the term of art now? Self-care. Then any excuse to start that process is a valid one. For me, my getting off of Facebook was prompted by the impending birth of my first child. And there's nothing special about that.
Max: You don’t want to be one of those people who posted all the pictures of their children.
Aaron: I didn't even want the temptation. I figured the time that I spend doing whatever it was I did back then on Facebook could be better spent with my family. And so whatever the trigger event is to help you re-examine your digital behavior, take advantage of it. Don't second guess it too much.
Max: Yes. One thing that my family's always yelling at me to put away the phone. But then as soon as I do, they start peppering me with questions that I can only answer with my phone, and I have to run and get it. And then it's like, “Would you rather I do this? Or would you rather we have a discussion about something else? Maybe not know certain things?”
Aaron: Yes, we live on an interesting cusp that there was a period of our lives where knowledge of trivia was a valuable skill. And then it stopped mattering because everything was a Wikipedia lookup away. And it wasn't that impressive if you could, off the top of your head, recite every track off of every album of a specific, obscure musician, when I could spend less than 30 seconds and find that same information myself.
Max: Yes. All right. So, let me just summarize the article because it does have some good ideas. They don't recommend going cold turkey on the screen time, says not all screen time is bad, after all, many students are attending school via video conferencing apps.
Actually, I'm kind of asking, are we sure that's actually a good thing? Maybe not. Maybe a lot of our Zoom meetings at work are not actually productive. But that's a whole other issue.
Aaron: Yes. I wouldn't blame that on Zoom. I blame that on meetings. But yes, separate discussion.
Max: Yes. So step one, they say is assessing which parts of screen time feel toxic and make you unhappy. That could be reading news, or scrolling through Twitter and Facebook, and Instagram by the way. Instagram is an interesting one, because the pictures usually make you happy. But they might be wasting time. They might be making you happy in the short run, but unhappy in the long run.
Aaron: You used to hear more about that in the context of Facebook, but it's kind of moved over to Instagram now that everyone's putting forward their most glamorous, curated version of their lives. And it makes you feel lesser because your life is not nearly as perfect as this curated image that they're projecting.
Max: Right. Okay, and then they say step two is creating a realistic plan to minimize consumption of the bad part. So what types of stuff would they suggest put in that plan?
First of all, treat screen time as if it were a piece of candy that you occasionally allow yourself to indulge. Don't think of it as taking a break, as many do, which is what I do a lot. I'm like, “Well, I'm taking a break. So I'll just scroll,” right? I'm starting to learn to be bored. Another thing is, they recommend, this is going to be a hard one for me, phones out of the bedroom. I'm like, “Well what if what if there's an emergency and someone needs to call me you or something like that?”
Aaron: Yes, I need to get better about—specifically I have two phones. I have a personal phone and on my work phone. And I need to when I log off my computer at whatever it is, 5:30 in the evening, I really should at least put it into Do Not Disturb mode. If not, completely turn off my work phone because there's very little value to me of checking work emails, and my work calendar obsessively in between the hours of 6pm and 7am the next day.
Max: Yes. I mean, the only thing that I want to be awakened for is, well, there's alarm if I need to set an alarm. Or I don't even think the phone really does this now, it actually filters that out. But if some close friend or family member needs to get a hold of me in an emergency, which actually that wouldn't even work now—now that I think about it, because it's on Do Not Disturb.
Aaron: I think you can set certain contacts to bypass Do Not Disturb.
Max: But I don't want it to be automatic.
Yes, I don't want that to be automatic. I want it to say, “Hey, is this an emergency?” Or I know there's certain people in my family who will be like, “I have a hangnail, it's an emergency to wake up at three in the morning,” “There's a bug in my apartment that is not in the same state as yours.”
Okay, but all right. So also another one, this is important when this goes back to kind of Episode 12, which was the one I had with Marisa Chacko about apps that are on your side, looking out for your interests and apps that are not, software that is not. So it’s like identify the hooks that kind of hooks you in the tricks like, up your score, beat your friends, collect them all. By the way, sometimes those serve a good purpose. But sometimes they are pushing you to do something you don't want to do, kind of like an addicting casino game, and you want to make them less likely.
So that means trying to turn off notifications, auto updates. Someone even suggested to take the colors off your phone, there's a way to make it black and white, and it makes it less addicting. That kind of scares me. I don't know if I want to do that. But anyway, there’s a bunch of ideas.
Aaron: I know on my Android, that it's literally a two button press to switch between color and black and white mode, which I do sometimes use.
Max: Okay. Okay, so I mean, I guess I could browse on my Kindle.
Aaron: I do find that's particularly useful. I will occasionally read articles or eBooks on my phone. But if I'm going to actually try and read a book, I much prefer reading it on my—what is it a Kindle paper, white paper white? Both, because it's a good tool for reading, but also because I think technically there is a browser in there, but it's super slow. And it's in black and white and super ineffective that if I actually need to go look something up other than a word definition or something like that, I will put the device down and go somewhere else. So it is one case where having a unit tasker, I think really makes a lot of sense.
Max: Yes. Okay, so you could see the link to this article and all of the related episodes at localmaxradio.com/147. That's basically it, I think we are on the cusp.
Aaron: I’ll bring it back with one last comment and that when you do go to, to maximum.locals.com to sign up for a free membership in the group there. You can customize your notifications to be as obtrusive or unobtrusive as you want. So, both in the app and over email. So, if you want to find out about every single post and like an update on there, or not so much. So yes, be judicious in how you set that up.
Max: Yes, you don't have to download the app too. There's also—you just go to the website, as well. So there's an app and a website, you could kind of choose.
I think we're kind of on the cusp of really having a phase switch on the internet. And I don't know how much I've been saying this, but I feel like it's kind of we're going to look back at—I don't know, something like 2019 to 2022 as sort of a phase shift where the internet transformed from looking one way to looking another way. And I think this is part of it. I think this article is part of a different way of thinking about it. I think getting on Locals, and kind of debundling all of these centralized social apps as part of it, I think we're going to see a very different internet at the end of this. And it's probably going to take a few years to look back and understand what happens but I think we're in the middle of it right now.
Aaron: I am not prepared to make predictions about what that would look like but I'm very interested to hear in the future your thoughts on exactly what shape that might take so well.
Yes, we're going to put that on our future topic list I think.
Max: Yes. All right. I think that just about covers it. I think that's a good episode. Any last thoughts, Aaron, before we say goodbye?
Aaron: I can't believe we're about to enter into December. Doesn't feel like winter yet here. But as someone once said, “Winter is coming.” So I guess you can officially start decorating for the holidays now that we're through Thanksgiving.
Max: Yes, yes. And I was going to say like Black Friday, who goes shopping anymore? I thought this must have been a terrible Black Friday for the company.
Aaron: One thing that I noticed and I think this was new this year is that everyone started their Black Friday sales like the week of Thanksgiving as in the weekend before, which I think that was new.
Max: Right, that's interesting.
Aaron: I wasn't expecting it.
Max: Yes, there's a new mall in Norwalk. Have you been there?
Aaron: I have not.
Max: I think it's only been there for a year and now they have like a meet Santa Claus. And they have it set up. So there's Santa, and there is...
Aaron: I assume you mean meet and greet, not a Santa Claus made out of meat products? Because the second one is more exciting to me.
Max: Yes, yes. Take a picture of your kid with Santa Claus. And then there’s—wasn't set up but there was a seat for him. And then like five feet in front, there's like two inch thick glass to separate your kid from that old man. And then another few feet in front of that, the seat where the kids said, I think that that might be something that like that stays because of all this. It's kind of freaky.
Aaron: Do you want to have to explain to your children someday why nobody got presents this year because you got Santa sick and killed him?
Max: That could be good excuse. That could be good excuse. Fortunately, I don't have to deal with that.
Aaron: Not yet.
Max: Well, no, I'll never have to deal with that because there is no Santa Claus in my family. Oh, there's an interesting story once. Back when I lived on Long Island, the fire department used to come around with the fire truck and they would dress up and they would throw candy to the kids. And in the Jewish family. We don't believe in Santa Claus. But I'm like, “I'm going to go out there and get that candy.”
Aaron: But you believe in candy. You're a red-blooded American child.
Max: I believe in Santa Claus now. Yes, I'm getting a candy cane. So, all right. Yes, I think that the takeaway from that is it doesn't matter if you don't teach your kids to believe in Santa Claus. There's still Santa Claus looming in the background if you want some candy and presents. It's, yes. You’re willing to suspend disbelief for a minute.
Aaron: Children's minds are very flexible.
Max: Yes. All right. So that's it. Now, I want to tell everyone you don't have a great weekend. If you have a second, maximum.locals.com, sign up. Really appreciate it. And any pointers you can give on how that was, like to hear about that, too.
And before we sign off, let's talk about the rest of the year. I maybe have a couple interviews to do. Aaron, I hope you come back. We could do like kind of an end of year review at the end of this year. So that would be a lot of fun.
Aaron: Yes, normally I've been doing a lot of traveling between Christmas and New Year's with visiting family. Not so much happening this year. So I'm fairly flexible.
Max: All right, great. Have a great week, everyone.
That's the show. Remember to check out the website at localmaxradio.com. If you want to contact me, the host or ask a question that I can answer on the show. Send an email to localmaxradio@gmail.com. The show is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher and more. If you want to keep up. Remember to subscribe to The Local Maximum on one of these platforms. Follow my Twitter account @MaxSklar. Have a great week.
