05 DTC 101

Social Media

5.1 Online Communities

Messaging in Early Networks

Social interaction has always been an important part of early computer networks, as these networks were designed to share data and research. The professionals affiliated with universities and research institutions who had access to the computers and who built the first computer networks sought ways to send messages to each other. At MIT in 1965, users accessing the same mainframe computer could leave messages in each other's file directories. In 1969, on ARPANET, the first message was sent from computer to computer. In 1971, Ray Tomlinson invented electronic mail and created ARPANET’s networked email system in which near instant messages could be sent between machines within an organization's network. With the growth and popularity of internal email systems, the technical problem was determining where exactly to send a message if many shared a single computer. Tomlinson invented the @ symbol to point messages to a particular user address rather than a computer's IP address: "username@name of computer." By 1976 75% of all ARPANET use was electronic mail and researchers began figuring out ways to send messages outside an internal network.

ARPANET was started by U.S. defense and intelligence communities and so all messages sent by ARPANET users were monitored and filtered. There were security and political reasons for this surveillance as the network was dependent on precarious funding and any transgressive behavior could derail the whole project. ARPANET users needed special permission to join the network. It was known that messages were monitored and that no messages could be sent anonymously, so messages were often self-edited and potentially offensive conversation was avoided.

Virtual Communities

Usenet was developed in 1979 by those researchers not accepted into ARPANET. Unlike ARPANET, Usenet was decentralized and was self-monitored. However, those accessing Usenet were mostly professionals affiliated with institutions, so reputations and job security likely kept behavior in check. Usenet was organized like a forum or virtual bulletin board, where users posted messages in newsgroups devoted to particular topics. Offenders and early forms of spam were handled by the group. In the 1980s, Usenet thrived. Free of institutional control and yet rigorously self-governed, the Utopian ideals of a networked humanity emerged as a reality.

The WELL, or the "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link", was another popular virtual community structured as a bulletin board. It was started by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in 1985. In the WELL, there were "public" conferences open to all members, and "private" conferences that were restricted to users controlled by the conference hosts. Staff, referred to as "confteam", had more administrative powers than conference hosts and were empowered to close accounts for abuse. It was on the WELL that John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, and Mitch Kapor met and went on to found the Electronic Frontier Foundation whose mission is "to defend privacy, free speech and innovation" on the Internet. The Utopian dreams of an open and free Internet was born in a social environment that had in place some monitoring and filtering of messages.

To a certain extent, the dreams of a democratic virtual agora have born out in today's social media platforms. People are freer to share and access information than in any time in history. However, it is clear that a “free” network, without some rule structure can present new problems around trust, privacy and safety that can threaten a network’s cohesiveness. Political hacking, identity theft, spam, hate speech are part of life online now. While there are security measures that can reduce these threats, the threats contribute to general network fragility and force new questions about the meaning of open and free. What makes a social network function - in a family, a tribe, a village or a town - is a delicate balance between individual freedom and group governance with established rules of play.

Commercial Networks

In the early 1990s as personal computers and the World Wide Web brought more people online, commerical networks such as America Online or AOL, Compuserv and Prodigy offered, for a fee, anonymous servers (not attached to institutions) where one did not need to link a user name with a real name. Identity became not only fluid but masked. One could be whomever one wanted to be. AOL chat rooms (an early form of instant messaging) were social gatherings spaces where users on PCs in the privacy of their own homes could carry on conversations with strangers - and remain strangers. People could be honest or lie, share personal stories or fictions, befriend or seduce.

AOL became enormously popular by 2001 and the company takes credit for bringing online culture to the American mainstream. But, as with any successful social network site, the power that comes from managing a massive commons, also makes it harder to adapt as networks change and social trust migrates. When AOL purchased Time Warner it signaled to its users a return to old media and centralized power. It also did not adapt quickly enough to broadband technology and the need for fast delivery of free content. Social networks, if given the freedom, can move quickly and accelerate desired change. If owners of networks do not respond, the network's value diminishes.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 describes the early 2000s shift toward participatory, user-generated websites and social platforms. It implies a leap from the Web's first phase, 1.0, that modeled itself on more traditional media companies and centralized content creation. The dot.com boom and bust made those invested in the web and web technologies rethink the purpose of this new virtual commons. Maybe the World Wide Web was not a space to dominate, but rather a space to foster collaborative and participatory behavior. Web 2.0 emphasizes people freely participating in a new technical culture that is no longer just for computer "geeks" (when it was a derogatory term) or traditional passive consumers. The new web was to be easy to use, democratic, fun and centered on social interaction and personal expression. Personal static websites became blogs and videoblogs with syndicated feeds that could spread branded content across the network. Communities found new ways to find each other, with folksonomic tagging. Business found new more personal way of engaging with their customers. The Web 2.0 media environment, in general, seeks integration with and across platforms. That is why social media sites, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking sites, video sharing sites (such as YouTube), hosting services, Web apps and mashup applications all seek more integration than competition within a vast global network.

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Web 2.0 companies make money by increasing user participation and attention. The more content "You" make, the more advertising the companies can generate. However, Web 2.0 companies are also in the business of managing a commons built on a certain amount of social trust. A social media "customer" can make great content, and receive many stars and likes, but the financial reward for this attention might go primarily to the owner of the space. In general, this is a positive win/win relationship, as long as significant advertising revenue is shared or the social media creator benefits in other ways from the attention generated by the platform. Once there is a perception of an abuse in the network, the trust is broken and the network dies.

The increased desire for openness and freedom within social media sites tends to increase the incidences of distrust. Fake news, spamming, trolling, hate speech, cyberbullying, and defamation corrode the value of the gathering space. As a consequence, greater restrictions and policing are imposed on the group from the owners. Today, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube have strict rules around a user's identity and fairly loose rule's around the content in posts. A user can block, unfriend or unfollow those they find offensive. Excessive nudity, violence, obscenity and abusive behavior can be reported. But information shared can be true or wildly untrue without a problem. If these sites were to dictate what content is appropriate and what is not, the restrictions would devalue the network as a free and open space.

From Communities to Feeds

Early social networks were built around visible communities: forums, bulletin boards, blogs, friend networks, and groups organized around shared interests. Users often chose where to go, who to follow, and what conversations to join. The structure of the network was shaped by the social graph: the connections between people, groups, pages, and communities.

Many contemporary platforms still include communities, but the center of social media has shifted toward algorithmic feeds. TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and other short-form video platforms often show users content from people they do not know and may never follow. Instead of asking, "Who are you connected to?" these systems ask, "What are you likely to watch, click, share, or continue scrolling through?" This shift changes social media from a network of relationships into a system for predicting attention.

The result is a new kind of social media experience. Users still communicate, but they also enter a stream of recommended content shaped by platform goals, advertising models, creator incentives, and automated ranking systems. The question is no longer only how people form communities online, but how platforms organize what people see.

Network Effects

One reason large social platforms become so powerful is network effects. A network becomes more valuable as more people use it. Each new member can create content, join conversations, and form new connections that make the platform more useful for everyone else. Network effects help explain why a small number of platforms often come to dominate social media, while new competitors face the challenge of convincing users to leave behind their existing communities and audiences.

5.2 Online Identities

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When Socrates stood before a crowd in the Agora of Athens and discussed his singular philosophy of life, his words were identified with a real person, who looked a certain way, had certain mannerisms and had a specific name and reputation that identified him with a family and social status. Identifying the man, allowed a young Plato to trust and follow his new teacher. A continuity of human presence and identity contributes to the social trust in a gathering place.

Most people would agree that they have many social identities: family, race, nationality, gender, sexual identity, age, religious belief, job and profession. In a Facebook or Twitter feed much can be gleaned about a person's social identities, interests and concerns. But there are also individual markers and traits that help define a person's singular identity: facial features, body type, fingerprints, social security, DNA. Different social networks emphasize different aspects of the many identities held by any one of their members. Some sites, like Facebook, care that their members are not anonymous and have a verifiable individual identity that everyone can see. Other sites or communities care that a member's profile fits within the stated community identity. A Christian women's group may not want to accept a male atheist. And there are social networks that thrive on anonymity and fictional play. In Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games or MMORPGs, social identity is a creative aspect of the game, but the real person behind the avatar is known by the company and often traceable by other members.

The first social networks didn't worry much about identity and profiles, because most members already knew each other or at least where they worked. As social networks expanded and allowed more anonymity, screen or user names such as "CravenMorehead" and "CommanderSalamander" became playful masks for new virtual gathering spaces. Yet, anonymity does not scale well. As online culture became more global and more mainstream in the 1990s and early 2000s, traceable individual identity became essential for the health of social networks. In Web 2.0 culture, one's virtual reputation in the network determined both network popularity and real world status and even job security. A major online mistake could ruin a reputation and perhaps jeopardize one's livelihood.

3D Avatars and Presence

Virtual worlds have long explored new forms of social interaction through digital bodies. MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft and virtual worlds like Second Life have used 3D avatars as social identities since the early 2000s. More recently, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies have made these avatars more expressive through hand tracking, facial animation, eye gaze, and voice communication.

During the early 2020s, several technology companies predicted that immersive virtual worlds—the metaverse—would become the next stage of social media. Although this vision did not replace existing social networks, virtual spaces continue to thrive in online games, VR social platforms, education, collaboration, and live events. Rather than replacing the web, these environments have become one way that people gather, create, learn, and play together online.

As these technologies continue to develop, they raise important questions about identity, embodiment, privacy, and trust. How does interacting through an avatar change communication? What information should virtual environments collect about our bodies and behavior? How might immersive social spaces deepen human connection while also creating new opportunities for surveillance, manipulation, or exclusion?

Synthetic Identities and AI Personas

Online identity is becoming more complex as AI makes it possible to generate convincing faces, voices, bodies, personalities, and even autonomous conversational agents. A profile image may be a photograph, an illustration, an avatar, or an AI-generated portrait. A voice may belong to a person, a voice actor, or a synthetic speech model. Some online accounts are now managed partly or entirely by AI systems that can converse, post content, and interact with other users. These developments do not make online identity meaningless, but they do make authenticity and trust more difficult to establish..

Synthetic identities can be playful and creative. Virtual influencers, game avatars, role-playing communities, VTubers, and anonymous accounts all show that identity online has never been limited to a person's legal name. Artists and performers have long adopted fictional personas to explore alternative identities and forms of expression. At the same time, synthetic identities can be used for deception, harassment, misinformation, fraud, impersonation, or automated manipulation. Healthy online communities must balance opportunities for creativity, anonymity, and privacy with mechanisms that help users understand who—or what—they are interacting with.

The challenge is not simply whether an online identity is "real" or "fake." Increasingly, people will interact with a mixture of humans, AI assistants, fictional characters, and hybrid human-AI accounts. The more important questions become: How does a community establish trust? When should AI-generated content be disclosed? What kinds of identity are appropriate for a given space? Who needs verification, and who needs privacy? When does a mask encourage creativity, and when does it become a tool for manipulation or harm?

5.3 The Network Commons

Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist from Indiana University, is the first woman to be awarded the Nobel in Economics. Her research about how communities co-operate to share finite resources proved the importance of the commons around the world.

Ostrom's research contradicts the popular “Tragedy of the Commons”, which has been interpreted to mean that private property is the only means of protecting finite resources from ruin or depletion. She documented how communities around the world, in fact come up with unique ways to govern the commons and assure its survival for future generations.

Ostrom offers 8 principles for how a commons can be governed sustainably and equitably in a community. Although commercial networks are not exactly offering a public commons, Ostrom's observations have proven very useful for thinking about the health of networks. Wikipedia, a social network as well as an online encyclopedia, is a "commons" where knowledge and information are resources that must be verified and managed in communities of shared interests using strict guidelines and rules of conduct. The finite resource that social media companies must protect is people's attention. To remain interesting and worthy of people's sustained attention, a social media network offers its members a private, managed and secure commons with features that encourage members to share great content. Private or public, an online gathering space is held together by strong bonds of social trust between its members and between members and the managing company.

8 Principles for Managing a Commons

1. 1. Define clear group boundaries. (set rules for social interaction, restrict groups, gates)
2. 2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions. (make rules beneficial to specific group)
3. 3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules. (involve users in rule-making)
4. 4. Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities. (relationship, dialogue and transparency between social media management and users)
5. 5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behavior. (assigned monitors of group interaction)
6. 6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators. (lots of warning before removal)
7. 7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution. (built-in systems of conflict resolution)
8. 8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system. (users share ownership, along with data)

The Corporate Commons

Social media platforms can be understood as a kind of commons because they depend on shared participation. Users create posts, images, videos, comments, reactions, recommendations, trends, hashtags, communities, and social value. Without the labor and attention of users, the platform would have little meaning.

At the same time, most major social media platforms are privately owned. This makes them corporate commons: spaces that feel public because many people gather there, but that are governed by companies through terms of service, content moderation rules, ranking algorithms, interface design, advertising systems, and business decisions. Users may experience the platform as a shared social space, but they rarely have direct control over the rules that shape that space.

Ostrom's principles help us ask better questions about platform governance. Are rules clear? Can users participate in changing them? Are punishments fair? Is there a meaningful appeal process? Is responsibility shared at many levels, or does power flow only from the company downward? These questions become even more important when the common resource being managed is not land or water, but human attention.

5.4 Algorithms and Attention

5.5 Unit Exercise: Social Media Design

Based on Ostrom's 8 Principles for Managing a Commons, assess the features and potential problems of some of the most popluar commercial social platforms as a "commons": Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. What contributes to the health of these platforms? What elements might contribute to a weakened social trust?

Design your idea of a social media platform that attempts to respect Ostrom's principles. This might require some far out-of-the-box thinking.

1. Describe the features of your ideal social media platform.
2. Describe how the platform is used to connect people with friends and communities.
3. What are the rules?
4. How will the platform be funded?

Additional Design Questions

1. How does your platform recommend content?
2. How does it protect user attention rather than simply capture it?
3. How does it prevent abuse, harassment, misinformation, or manipulation?
4. How does it reward creators without making them completely dependent on the platform?
5. How does it identify bots, synthetic media, or fake accounts?
6. Who owns the user data, and what can users control?

Discussion Questions

1. Is social media more like a public square, a shopping mall, a television network, or a game?
2. What happens when attention becomes the common resource that platforms manage?
3. Should users have more power to shape the algorithms that organize their feeds?
4. How do synthetic identities change trust in online communities?
5. Can a privately owned platform function as a healthy commons?

5.6 Glossary

• agora: a public gathering space for discussion, exchange, politics, commerce, and community life.
• algorithmic feed: a stream of content sorted by automated recommendation systems rather than by time or direct social connection.
• attention economy: an economic system in which human attention is treated as a scarce resource to be captured, measured, and monetized.
• avatar: a digital representation of a person, character, or identity in an online space.
• bot: an automated account or program that performs actions online, sometimes transparently and sometimes deceptively.
• commons: a shared resource managed by a community through rules, norms, and systems of trust.
• creator economy: the system of platforms, tools, audiences, and monetization methods that support independent online creators.
• cyberbullying: harassment, intimidation, or abuse carried out through digital communication platforms.
• electronic mail: a system for sending messages between users across computer networks.
• fake news: false or misleading information presented in the style of legitimate news.
• platform governance: the rules, policies, algorithms, and moderation systems used to manage behavior on a digital platform.
• recommendation algorithm: an automated system that predicts and ranks what content a user is likely to engage with.
• social graph: the network of relationships among people, groups, pages, and accounts on a platform.
• synthetic media: media created or altered by computational systems, including AI-generated images, voices, videos, and text.
• trolling: disruptive online behavior intended to provoke, upset, mislead, or derail a conversation.
• web 2.0: a phase of the web centered on user participation, sharing, social networking, and platform-based interaction.

5.7 Bibliography