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Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
scubacuda writes "Clay Shirky has written an excellent article entitled "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality." Simply put, diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality: "A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on." A must read for anyone interested in the statistics, fairness, and power relations of blogging."
A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on.
Slashdot.
Slashdot's created an underclass of poster's whose views (rightly or wrongly in your opinion) are supressed by the will of the majority. Over time, they grow disatisfied with the system, and revolt in the only way available to them... flooding the conversation with repetition. I'm sure almost everyone has been the victim of unfair moderation (I know I have), and if you're the victim for too long, you fight back.
Hey give me a break, this is expected and unless you want to read, listen and weblog 24 hours a day, you will find a way to consume what you can. Thanks for analyzing another "phenomenon" that is pretty much expected.
This is also one reason why The Sims Online is completely flopping. Sure, you might be able to get the in-game money to build a great house with lots of accessories, but not everyone can have 15 guests at all times. So, all power is concentrated in certain places, driven by reputation which is picked up early in the process.
Latecomers and people who don't play much end up screwed if they had their hearts set on being the social spot of the game.
...not a troll, think about it: Read the article, substitute the word 'blog' with 'goods and services'... this article is a great argument why capitalism works and communism/socalism doesn't.
Capitalism allows for many freedoms of choice in selecting goods and services, while communism/socialism does not as you must get all your goods and services from only 1 source. (the government). No choice.
Anyways, I like the math and the graphs and such....
The world created an underclass of police and law makers whose views (rightly or wrongly in your opinion) are suppressed by the will of the majority. Over time, they grow disatisfied with the system, and revolt the only way available to them... hazerdous driving habits. I'm sure almost everyone has been the victim of unfair police treatment(I know I have), and if you're the victim for too long, you fight back.
And of course, troll.
Wouldn't that mean that we need to regard you as a highly repetitive karma whore?
Your contributions to slashdot thus far have been effectively nil. For every good post you have (and there are plenty of those), you counter with completely useless content. Can you imagine a thousand of your posts filling up slashdot?
The people you want to hear will be heard.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
And I'll say it again...
"Equality of Opportunity does not Equal Equality of Results".
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Free speech is a right. Being heard is a privilege.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
That's what you get when you try to mix communism with democracy... (see sig)....
A benine dictatorship is the best form of government...
Just checkout the house of Lords.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
A must read for anyone interested in the statistics, fairness, and power relations of blogging.
What the hell does fairness have to do with someone putting up a log? If he doesn't get hits, then it sucks to be him, and he should start putting up interesting information. ANYONE can put up a log. There are numerous companies that provide free webspace. And as for power relations.. If you create something interesting and people like it, you will get more readers. The more readers you have, the more power. Wow, funny how that works.
If this pattern is truly global, then it probably means that a few years the Music world will be pretty much the same as it is now, except without the Recording Industry. People who are predicting the demise of record companies say there will be no more Michael Jacksons, just an amorphous mass of musicians offering their music free on the web and making a living off concert dates. But according to the Power Law, there will be superstars even when the star-making machinery is gone.
...he's described any social system with a large number of participants. At first glance one would think that the World Wide Web and the grand vision of "anyone can be a publisher" would move us away from cliques and one or two very popular entities but the reverse has been true.
For instance, despite how easy it is for anyone to start a Slashdot or Fark ripoff site no one commands as much traffic in their genre as either site. In fact as more people get online, the proportion of those that end up of being Slashbots or Farkheads versus migrating to their "competition" is quite disproportional.
One could also say why despite the fact that the music sharing networks allow anyone to get their music heard by the masses they end up being clogged with the same top 40 shit from the radio from boy bands, Britney Spears and wannabe hip hop thugs.
This is way human behavior manifests itself, like it or not. We see it everywhere, not just the net.
I had a friend ask me if I had set up a blog yet, and I told him, "well, I've considered it, but it just seems too much like the 'trend-du-jour'." He jokingly scoffed at me, drawing a comparison between my comment and someone who may have thought that the internet was nothing more than a temporary distraction.
Well, what happens when the economies of scale start to set in, as the article points out? I'd argue that the more prevalent this becomes, the less value it has. One is less likely to encounter 'differently-thinking' participants, or to be confronted with legitimate ideas that challenge the status quo. We can see these dynamics at work in one aspect of our culture that gets discussed regularly here on Slashdot: the music industry: a small number of artists produce a relatively small amount of music that is making a very small number of people very rich. And of course, when I see this happening, I have to start wondering about both motives and the integrity of the artist...popularity has a certain allure to many people, but how willing is an artist (or blogger) willing to sell their soul/integrity in order to reach that objective?
"Stars" aka "lowest common denominator".
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Sorry, but the trolls created their own mess. People get modded down for a reason. Sure, sometimes elitists will mod down a post they don't agree with (asy, almost anything pro-Microsoft) but for the most part the things that get modded down are either stupid, inflamitory, insulting, off-topic etc...
If these people didn't want their posts to get modded down they'd find a contructive soultion to their problems. Say, staying on topic, or abiding by basic rules of etiquette (by saying "I don't agree with your position" rather than "U R a dumass!").
This is not like life where one can born be into poverty. The problems anyone has here are of their own creation.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Wow. There's a shocker.
--- Ban humanity.
You know, we got offline text documents if you really want just yourself as an audience ;) Anyways, my journal doesn't contain that much, just two mad one liners and something odd I thought off, adressed to whoever it may concern. Perhaps someone will post something interesting, perhaps someone will have soms advice for either me or someone elese or perhaps I will just attract trolls. Heck, I don't really care, it's there for anyone to mess around with.
The zoo system is quite entertaining if you think about it. Why hate someone if you disagree with that person? Even more, why suddenly befriend someone who agrees with you a few times? I often find myself having more interesting conversations with people who actually disagree with me... The only people who I got listed at foes (only because that allows me to stick a nice fat -6 modifier to their posts) are because of people with no sense humour or the occasional self-righteous American who think patriotism equals going to war with anything. I'd much rather have just normal functions such as "Ignore" and "Highlight", which either ignores a poster completely or puts highlighted people on top. Much less confusing, much more efficient imho.
Ah well...
Hate me!
The study talks directly to this "natural" phenomenon you're talking about being a little more systematic than just vanilly free will. In rating type systems like k5, slashdot, advogato, etc. "Superstars" come out of the rating system. It shows how the rating gap wouldn't just be dependent on the quality of the person being rated. Those with high ratings would likely acquire more rating and those with neutral or low ratings would continue to below average into the "power curve." The study hardly talks at all about if this is "fair" or not, but it talks extensively about the momentum of popularity, groupthink, stuff like that. I think it's even more interesting in the momentum-like barriers to entry faced by new entries into the system.
This study is showing that the popular opinion that since everyone can post anything on any system at any time gives them an equal liklihood of being heard is erroneous. Any small imbalance in probability of tending to one site or the other will likely result in the "power curve." People who feel "left out on the Web" don't need to see a psychologist, they are feeling appropriately because the rift between the heards and heard-nots is big. It's not that it's not fair, it's that our misguided notion of if everyone can speak everyone will be heard by someone is misguided in a free system with many choices.
Sorry, but I call BS. If you were only writing a journal for you and you alone, you would not have it on the internet. You want positive responses to your thoughts, otherwise you would keep them private. Which is fine, I don't care, you can do what you want. But don't pretend that you are only writing for yourself when you publish it to the world.
That is my opinion in a general sense. I think people should be able to keep online journals, I wouldn't take that away from them. But on a more personal note, I think publishing journals is kind of dumb, because for the most part the average person has nothing interesting to say. And yes, you probably fall in that category, although most bloggers wouldn't think I am referring to them. I have known people (actual people, not virtual) who do the journal thing online, and they are the kind of people who generally like to talk a lot about nothing interesting. They throw around ideas without thought, pretend to have some kind of interesting writing style, and are pretty annoying. They talk simply for the sake of talking, be it online or in person. The online journal just gives them a worldwide audience to annoy. I know this will offend all you "bloggers" out there, and I do realize that I am posting comments on Slashdot. But this is in relation to a topic, not just me rambling about what I had for breakfast or what I think a really cool invention would be.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
But I submit this, there are always selection rules in effect, both internal and external, conscious and subconscious. People found their way to a particular region. and a particular college. and a particular living space. and so on. Likewise, a sequence of events lead people to a particular online community; whether it be newsgroup, bulletin board or blog.
And the key word here is community. And as such we bring with it all the rules, semi-rules and baggage from our own personal social models. Effective communication and means to reach consensus become increasingly difficult as you add more members. Quickly, you reach a point where it is impossible for everyone to 'assemble' to air their own viewpoints and any meaningful discussion becomes impossible. The signal-to-noise ratio rapidly increases and the only apparently viable method of being heard above the din is to enhance the 'strength' of your output, ie shout. Direct representative political systems work best on a small, local level. As you increase the membership of the system, particular over a geographically-diverse area, the system alligns itself into a hierarchical system (eg, mayors, governors, Representatives, President). Deference in the matter of representation, at least in the US, was to be assigned to one's peers. In theory then, the collective voice of the 'people' would be coalesced into a single voice in Government. Now, whether or not this happens in practice, however, is another matter for discussion.
In the matters of discourse, it is only natural that there emerges a system of trusted 'authorities.' Gurus, teachers, whathaveyou, that again represent the consolidation in a particular area. These are people (or resources) that must be appealed to in order to bring order and structure to discussion. These acquire their credentials through structures created and recognized by the various communities. These 'super nodes' are looked to from many eyes and their voices reach many people simultaneously.
Now, the balkinization of communities is again only natural. A community in general, but an online on in particular, tends to abide by the same effects that others have observed about the internet (web pages, p2p nodes,etc). 'Neighborhoods' asemble around common perceptions, ideas and the overal cohesiveness of the structure. Friendship groups, for instance, ebb and flow in size, generate and dissolve over time. Naturally, if people can't get something from a particular group, they will move elsewhere. And again, as size grows, systems tend to self-organize, collecting around authority figures (in the sense described before) and around certain core beliefs.
In the end though, one shouldn't be surprised at this turn. However, blog-ing communities and the Internet overall do offer a unique advantage: you can always go buffet style, sampling all that various groups have to offer.
That is much more descriptive of socialism (which is extremely heirarchical and stratified; as seen in North Korea).
In capitalism, everyone is in charge of their own economic lives. Economic autonomy; people make their own economic decision and determine what is a fair trade with others.
The internet and any system that promotes this kind of anarchy will be the same way. That is why we need some kind of democratic structure to be applied
Democracy is a great way to control government, but should not be used to control personal decisions (including economic ones). Those should be left to individuals, not outside coercive forces.
"so that the needs of everyone don't get trampled by those of the first few whose only accomplishment was getting there first" How many of those who "got here first" are still big and powerful? Yahoo comes to mind, but most of the others that started out back then are long gone and forgotten. Anyone still have a home page on Xoom? Anyone use Pathfinder as a portal?
If you were only writing a journal for you and you alone, you would not have it on the internet. You want positive responses to your thoughts, otherwise you would keep them private.
Not true. I blog, because I like being able to open up and clarify my thoughts. I have comments disabled - frankly, I don't give a large rat's patootie who reads my blog, if anybody at all besides me does. It's a journal, fer cryin' out loud. You don't write in a journal with the expectation that millions of people are going to read it and suddenly like you. You write in a journal to clarify what's going on in your life, to help you see where you've been, where you're headed, and maybe even spot trends that you may have missed, ways of doing things that always produce bad results. With that knowledge, you might even be able to change.
Sure, you needn't treat blogs the same way I do. You can do with them as *you* see fit - but I, though I be in a very small minority, do not fit your ideas as to why people blog.
Lemon curry?
In the latest issue of "The Mississippi Rag", a periodical on Ragtime and traditional Jazz, there's an interview with John Novacek where he goes on and on about how great Scott Joplin is, with only a passing nod to other composers (Scott, Lamb, Blake, et al.) Ragtime web sites are largely the same way -- they'll have a thorough Joplin section, with MIDI tarballs and such, and only smatterings of everything else. That Chris Ware "Ragtime Ephemeralist" had biographical sections on Scott Joplin, sheet music for "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer", along with cursory bits from other composers. There's some big ragtime festival in Sedalia, MO., in honor of Joplin, etc., etc.
For the sorts of people who actually still bother to listen to Ragtime, Scott Joplin is still the main star. His rags were head and shoulders above everyone else's -- simpler, more powerful, catchier. Ragtime enthusiasts are a pretty goddamned marginalized customer demographic, and even they aren't a totally egalitarian crowd. Joplin's still the king.
I find it surprising that you dismiss all possible alternative explanations as simply being hidden glory-seeking.
For a counter-example to your argument, I write publicly rather than privarely so that if a friend wants to understand me better but is too shy to ask or doesn't know to ask, they can go browse. It seems like a valid enough reason to me, and wholly distinct from the general glory-seeking you claim is universal.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
The most interesting question here I think is the extent to which any individual choice can be called "free" when it is so extremely contingent on the choices other people make.
When you "freely" make a choice because 80% of the people also makes that choice, then how free is that?
See title;
.com blogs too; how many do I read? 1. Slashdot and K5 have journals too, but I only read 1 of those,too.
Too many people now-a-days will start a blog/journal/diary/whatever and expect it to instantly become popular. They may write about everything and nothing, about politics and sex and drugs, but they never get really well-read.
Why? Because unless people know who you are, they generally don't care.
Let's pick on Livejournal for a second. It is flirting with 1 million user accounts right now (inluding mine), but how many do I read? Maybe I read about 4; There are thousands of
It should be no suprise that the journals/blogs/etc I read are those of people I feel I have an aquaiantance with, albeit at a distance. I read 'Taco's journal because I know what he did. I read Brad's livejournal because I know what he did; Same with Rusty, jwz and a few others.
But anyone else I don't care about. Why? Because they haven't *done* anything I care about. You may like to write, but don't expect people to read just because you do it. See title.
And I'm not alone; I started a popular internet thing that people use a lot. Suddenly I find names I don't know commenting in my LJ and showing up in my "friends" list, even on my Zoo page here. It's not because they like what I write just for the sake of it, but because they have a point of reference to relate to me on.
That's what it comes down too -- if we can't relate to you, we don't care.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
"Capitalism (Score:1) ..."
by composer777 (175489) on Tuesday February 11, @03:27PM (#5282525)
Is any of this a suprise to anyone? Haven't we witnessed the same thing with the economic anarchy that we call capitalism?
The point is that this is not a social phenomenon. Any situation where positive feedback occurs tends to result in power laws.
You can see it in the distribution of wealth in capitalist economies, in the size of earthquakes, and in the size of financial fluctuations.
Thus insurance companies keep getting surprised by the size of natural disasters, a few people are disproportionately wealthy, and hedge funds keep getting wiped out by market movements that their naive models say should almost never happen.
Attempts to seek explanations within individual participants in the system are a waste of time. If you don't like the outcome, then you need to damp down the positive feedback.
For example, to reduce wealth distribution skew, have heavy taxes on the wealthy, especially on unearned wealth.
There are not many ways to reduce positive feedback in information distribution, and maybe you don't want to do this. After all, most blogs aren't that good. However to the extent that the skew is random, it is probably bad, so services that look for and publicize good new or underrated blogs would be useful for example.
Tim Josling
I hope you are not advocating such a policy. For one thing, it skews things even worse, since tax moneys are extorted by the ruling class for their own benefit. If you really want to get rid of the skew, force the wealthy to give to the poor. Not to the greedy rulers.
True.
However, the reason I blog (and I am sure I am not the only one) is mainly to keep distant friends updated with my life, and the happenings in my city. I don't want millions of people viewing my site because none of my ramblings would mean anything to them. However, it would mean something to those who know me personally. For example if I were to say friend X got married to friend Y, that would mean something to a friend of friend Y, who happens to be in our circle of friends. Think about the close knit of friends you may have had during your college years, but after moving out of college, you lost touch. This is a way for people to still keep track of what friends are up to without mass emailing everyone what is happening all the time. My life generally consists of useless stuff that most people couldn't care less about, but means a lot to those in my close knit of friends.
Wouldn't it simply stand to reason, when all restrictions were removed, that the more capable people would rise to the top? Respectfully, I don't need charts to tell me this. IMHO, using a barometer of "equality" with regards to freedom and diversity is a political interpretation, not a scientific one. On the right wing, you have the "survival of the fittest," and on the left wing you have the "level playing field for everyone."
To say diversity and choice lead to inequality implies that someone's inalienable rights are being violated. Others might rejoice that the proof is in the pudding: when the barriers are removed, the most capable people can rise to the top. To say people are experiencing inequality ignores their potential mediocrity, IMO.
The article concludes that, for the most part, the inequality of weblogging is fair, as it stands now. It's still quite easy for any internet user to start a weblog. If the blog is interesting there is still a chance that it can be picked up and become popular because of its content. However, the article also indicates that it is going to get worse. That as time goes on, homeostasis kicks in and the popularity of a weblog will have less and less to do with the quality of its content. I think anyone would agree that losing out on good bloggers or a good article because of the power law is a negative result of having more choice and diversity. If any human social system with sufficient freedom and sufficient diversity will ultimately lead to a power law type of distribution, where quality content, that would, in similar circumstances, be just as popular, doesn't for most of the cases, what do we do about it? Should we just keep moving on to the next more equal system, until it becomes so large as to start the same trend again? Probably not. Oh man, this post didn't work out at all. Anyway, I think that one of the "big, important" goals of human society and research and intelligence should be towards finding ways to level the field as much as possible. Blogging is fair now. But it won't be. Necessarily? The article seems to say so. Is their anything that can keep it honest? Blogging seems like it has much more of a chance then something like wealth distribution. Why does it do better than wealth? Can we take the reasons for why it is more fair to maintain its fairness in the future and apply it to other power law systems like wealth distribution? Or is it doomed as choice and diversity increase? Am I retarded?
Slashdot is a pretty good example of this curve. This newslink gets posted. Fifty people reply to it. Ten of those replies get positive feedback. Anyone else who reads the topic later in the day will now read only the positive feedback replies, and anyone else who had anything to say, even if it was good and no one was interested in giving it karma, will now go unheard. Of course, as late as I am in typing this reply, it's pretty unlikely that anyone will read it...
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
I understand that you *claim* to be interested in the truth but in actuality you are not. My experience with those who spout the garbage you spout is that they are interested solely in propagandizing but when pressed will claim to be interested in facts and truth.
Point by Point:
How about giving Democracy a try? It has a severe dampening effect on concentration of power.
Prove this
Why do you guys always bring up socialism any time someone criticizes capitalism? Is your thinking that narrow-minded?
Ad Hominem
Has your world been reduced to only those two options? Are you trying to live up to the reputation that Americans have for being uneducated and ill-informed?
More Ad Hominem. I'll start responding when you stop with the personal attacks.
A good question to ask yourself is why the people in control of our society have reduced the choice between economic systems down to two,
Just who are these 'People In Control of our Society'? The fact of the matter is that in free socities such as ours, the market determines the choices. Those who claim to fight for the little guy are the only ones claiming unfair amount of choices
and now that socialism has self-destructed, cheered about the fact that there is supposedly only one? Are you dumb enough to believe that people in big business push the present form of capitalism because it is good for you?
More Ad Hominem
Do you really think they are looking out for your interests?
I am looking out for my interests. I am not hung up on some supposedly all-powerful Corporation. I do not blame others either my failures or my successes. I do not need anyone to 'protect' me from the big, bad meanies. In other words, I take responsibility for my actions and the results. Blaming others for your (or those 'unfortunates' that you 'represent' 'cause they 'have no voice') problems will get you nowhere.
What you misunderstand about power laws is that they only describe systems of pure anarchy.
Really? Please substantiate this statement
The problem with systems that have no regulation is that eventually people start getting extremely pissed off as a disproportionate amount of power leaves their hands.
What you are failing to understand is that they *are* regulated. Just not in the manner you wish- some authority overseeing the system based on 'scientific methods'. Power shifts and a self-regulating system changes.
Since you are referring to history, you will understand that if power becomes statified enough, eventually a revolution will occur and leave people hanging from lamp posts.
I do understand this. However, revolution is not the inevtiable result. Self-regulating systems generally revert back to a stasis if left unmolested by individuals who are interested in using the temporary disequillibrium to their advantage. Remove the idealouges such as Kerensky and even Russian survives.
And, since you are such a student of economics, you probably already know that wealth concentration is occuring in the US at an alarming rate. The top 1% of the US population owned 33% of the total wealth of the nation in the 1980s, and that has shot up to over 40% by the late 90s, and it's still rising.
These numbers are thrown around like the truth. I think that the numbers even get worse with every successive manipulation. Before you know it, someone will claim with absolute certainty that "1% of the population has 100% of the wealth..." I challenge you here and now to either substantiate them are accept the fact that they are lies. Do it or your credibility goes to zero pal. Just 'cause Chomsky says it don't make it true. I can provide proof that Capitalism is working better than any other economic system ever invented. Can you prove otherwise?
By contrast, the bottom 40% only own 1% of the wealth. This is where many revolutions start.
Revolutions start? Then how come it ain't happening? No matter how much you feel it should be occurring it isn't....not even close. Just goes to show that no matter how much you seek to destroy the system with your false propaganda, people are generally pretty damn satisfied.
The function of Democracy is to prevent this from happening.
The function of Democracy is self-government. The function of a Democracy is not to ensure that nobody gets their feelings (or wallet) hurt. Imbedded in the Democratic Ideal is self-reliance.
Unforutnately, we have a very limited form of Democracy that is being drowned out by our economic system.
Can you substantiate this claim? Or is it just another unthinking "Big Business runs everything" line
There...happy? I can't believe that I just wasted ten minutes of my valuable time with you.