Psychological, cognitive and democracy issues with Social Networking Services and their connection to Self-Sovereign Identity.

TL;DR: Social Networking Services are a great invention of our time. In the
same time, they cause large psychological and cognitive issues, that have
significant negative impact on individuals and communities. The root cause
of these negative issues is attention based business model, not
centralization. Decentralization in itself is a red herring. Just
decentralizing current services will not fix their issues. To fix these
issues we need to invent a new business model that will allow us to build
and maintain a set of core human-centric cooperation/communication
services, among which Social Networking Service is the most important one
from psychological and cognitive perspective.

Moses thank you for raising the topic related to the psychological issues
and Self-Sovereign Identity [1]. It's a large topic – a complicated tangle
of intertwined issues, causes and effects. To add more clarity, let me try
to untangle the tangle, and put its constituent parts, into a few lists.

*Key Terms to be used*
 - Personality, Identity, Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)
 - Social Networking Services (SNS)
 - Attention Based Business Model (ABBM)
 - Self-Sovereign Identity Based Business Model (SSIBBM)

I want to shortly contrast Identity vs Personality. Sometimes these terms
are used interchangeably and this leads to a confusion.
Identity – is representation of entity (human, thing, virtual entity) in
virtual/digital world. It can be understood as an actor of entity in
virtual/digital world, or as a set of attributes that allow to identify the
entity in the physical world.
Personality is how we know someone as a human. A set of psychological
traits, interests, ways to behave and communicate that characterize person
from human point of view.
>From human perspective, personality defines/is identity, but it is not the
same thing from technical perspective.


*Background Environment*
 - Emergence of Social Networking Services (SNS) – unseen from human
evolutionary perspective, persistent one-to-many communication tool –
"everyone has a stage with audience now".
 - Attention Based Business Model (ABBM) – business model based on
capturing attention of users and selling part of it to advertisers. ABBM is
used to develop and maintain all mainstream SNS.
 - Human need and tendency to minimize mental load.
 - Human need for connection/communication, belonging to a group.
 - Human need/propensity for social competition (for attention, prestige,
status; “to be liked”, “to be not worse than”).

*Issues and their causal pathways*
Before you go through the issues, take a moment and think about 2 quotes
from the former Facebook VP for growth, – “_I feel tremendous guilt_ … The
short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how
society works.”[2]; “My kids get no screen time whatsoever...” [3]

/Psychological issues/
 - Less happiness: ABBM >> enticing high engagement >> more notifications,
more interesting “variably-delightful” feeds >> more short term pleasure >>
dopamine resistance>> less long term happiness [6]
 - Increased envy: ABBM + social competition >> enticing high engagement >>
uncompartmentalized “all or nothing” profiles + more competition >> no
opportunity for asymmetric social competition, no opportunity to switch
focus >> “best moments only” profiles >> more envy >> more “best moments
only” posts >> envy spiral
 - Increased anxiety: ABBM + social competition >> … >> envy spiral >>
feeling of inadequacy >> more anxiety
 - Increased loneliness: ABBM >> enticing high engagement >> less
face-to-face interaction >> more loneliness; || ABBM + social competition
>> ...(see envy path)… >> “best moments only” profiles >> feeling of
missing out >> increased perceived social isolation
 - Increased depression: ABBM + social competition >> … >> envy spiral +
anxiety + loneliness + dopamine resistance >> more depression

/Other psychological issues/
 - Narrow and shallow view on personality: ABBM + social competition >>
high engagement >> uncompartmentalized “all or nothing” profiles >> more
focus on conspicuous consumption, “shallow” things
 - Unnatural distribution of communication time (a few post, most passively
consume): ABBM >> enticing high engagement >> uncompartmentalized “all or
nothing” profiles without easy to use layered privacy + enticing sharing
mode “share-to-all or do-not-share-at-all” >> only a few people feel
comfortable to share, most just consume

/Cognitive issues/
 - Decreased attention span = ABBM >> enticing high engagement >> more
notifications + more interesting “variably-delightful” feeds >> dopamine
resistance >> less ability to concentrate [6, 7]
 - Decreased motivation to do “boring stuff” = ABBM >> enticing high
engagement >> more notifications + more interesting “variably-delightful”
feeds >> dopamine resistance >> less motivation

/Privacy issues/
 - Leakage of private, personal personality information: ABBM + social
competition>> enticing high engagement >> no easy to use gradiated privacy
layers tools>> enticing sharing mode “share-to-all or do-not-share-at-all”
+ need to minimize mental load + need for connection/communication >>
oversharing >> unintended leakage of personal/private information
 - Psychometric, manipulative advertisement: ABBM >> … >> unintended
leakage of personal/private information >> manipulative advertisement

/Community and democracy related issues/
 - Echo chambers: ABBM >> enticing high engagement >> “do not upset users”
>> show only stuff they agree with >> echo chambers >> bad democracy
 - Fake news: ABBM >> enticing high engagement >> no incentives to create
tools to fight bots and trolls >> proliferation of bots and trolls + echo
chambers + more engagement from sensational news + need to minimize mental
load >> more fake news
 - Psychometric, manipulative advertisement in politics: ABBM >> … >>
unintended leakage of personal/private information >> manipulative
advertisement

Of course, different people are affected by SNSs differently, depending on
conditions and personality traits. More about issues created by ABBM fueled
SNSs you can read here: [4], [5], [6], [7].


*What we can do*
 - Recognize the issues
 - Recognize the root cause of the issues – ABBM (Attention Based Business
Model)
 - Understand to what extent issues are driven by ABBM vs. human nature in
the environment of SNS
 - Define goals
 - Create new business model to support human-centric SNS
 - Create and maintain human-centric SNS


*Potential Goals*
We need to provide alternative, that really works. It should be similar to
current SNSs, but have human-centric functionality. Important to
distinguish between real root cause and secondary issues. For example,
centralization issue is a red herring. Wikipedia works wonderfully,
although it is not decentralized.

/Target psychological issues/
 - Less happiness (increase in anxiety, loneliness, depression): bad or
good thing?
   Probably we went too far into short term pleasure side (notifications
and “variably-delightful” feeds) and got too much side effects (dopamine
resistance + increased envy). A lot of people cannot use SNS and go cold
turkey - “Facebook is a new smoking” now.
   Can be fixed on dopamine-resistance side: less interesting
“variably-delightful” feeds + less notifications + more informative feeds
>> less engagement on SNS, less pleasure short term, but still remain
informed >> more happiness long term || Also entice users to connect in
real world instead of enticing engagement on SNS >> more happiness
 - Increased envy, envy spirals: bad or good thing?
    Not obvious, often a good thing – Instagram fitness effect, lifestyle
changes. in other words: “It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy.”,
- Warren Buffett. Benign envy >> more competition >> mostly good thing for
society at large,  often good thing for individual. Worse when focus of
competition is not beneficial for society – too much focus on conspicuous
consumption.
    Partially fix: opportunity for asymmetric social competition,
opportunity to switch focus from conspicuous consumption to other things
via compartmentalized social profile
 - Narrow and shallow view on personality: bad or good thing?
    Probably a bad thing for society at large.
    Can be fixed: compartmentalized social profile >> comprehensive but
compartmentalized, privacy layered view on personality

/Target cognitive issues/
 - Decreased attention span: bad or good thing?
   Can be fixed: less interesting “variably-delightful” feeds + less
notifications >> less dopamine depletion >> more attention
 - Decreased creativity, motivation to do “boring stuff”: bad or good thing?
   Can be fixed: less interesting “variably-delightful” feeds + less
notifications >> less dopamine depletion >> more attention

/Target privacy issues/
 - Leakage of private, personal personality information: bad or good thing?
 - Mostly bad thing. Can be fixed by compartmentalized profiles.

/Target community and democracy related issues/
 - Echo chambers: bad or good thing?
   Bad thing.
   Fix: stop enticing high engagement >> allow to “upset users” || Another
way to do this is by using Validbook UX feature – “Channels” – when you see
what others see, sharing feeds with other users.
 - Fake news: bad or good thing?
   Bad thing.
   Fix: remove incentives for high engagement + incentivize to create hard
to forge real human profiles (see Validbook SURLHIs) + tools to report
trolls >> less bots, less trolls >> less fake news
 - Psychometric, manipulative advertisement in politics: bad or good thing?
   Bad thing.
   Fix: No advertisement on human-centric services + less public leakage of
personality information due to compartmentalized layered profiles >> less
opportunity for psychometric, manipulative advertisement


*Tools*
/UX tools/
Quite simple UX changes can make SNS less engaging, but more humane.
 - Compartmentalized profiles: comprehensive view on personality >>
opportunity for asymmetric social competition, opportunity to switch focus
>> less envy, less unhappiness (implemented on VB Social by using UX
feature - Books).
 - Compartmentalized and layered privacy: easy to use gradiated privacy
layers tools >> more connection/communication >> less leakage of
personality information (implemented on VB Social by using UX feature -
Books)
 - Inverted following model (compartmentalized, layered identity following,
controlled by the followed identity): followed identity can open different
compartments of itself to followers, usually done mutually mimicking the
real life human relations (implemented on VB Social by using UX feature -
Books).
 - Informative and privacy layered feeds of information – ability to have a
lot of feeds, tailored per different needs >> less engagement, more
information, more connection (implemented on VB Social by using UX feature
- Channels)
 - Point of view from other identity – ability to share your feeds, look
into other people’s feeds (implemented on VB Social by using UX feature -
Channels)
 - Calm mode: ability to receive all notifications at one time in a day >>
less notifications >> less engagement, but still informed >> more
happiness, motivation, focus

/AI tools/
Mental load minimization is very important – "convenience trumps
everything". Some issues can not be fixed by UX changes only, because they
require too much of humans’ limited mental capacity. Algorithms/AI can help
to minimize mental load, by automating sorting, filtering of feeds and
making smart notifications.
 - All UX tools should and can be greatly enhanced with AI/algorithms.


*Relation between Self-Sovereign Identity and Social Networking Tools*
To the large extent the root cause of all issues with SNS is ABBM. Thus to
fix the issues we need to fix their root cause – create a new business
model. Self-Sovereign Identity allows us to create such new business model
–  Self-Sovereign Identity Based Business Model (SSIBBM).

SSIBBM in a nutshell: create money based on Self-Sovereign Identity, take
part of that money to develop human-centric cooperation services.

SSIBBM logic:
 - Create service that will allow people to create SSIs
 - Create service that allows SSI to prove that it uniquely represents a
human individual
 - Create Kudos (tokens with daily supply 1 token per 1 living human (7.5B
KDS/day in 2018; 11.3B KDS/day in 2118)
 - Distribute *all Kudos, between SSIs that proved to uniquely represent
human individual only* - thus create huge continuous incentive for people
to participate in Kudos distribution and support Kudos value. In this way
*solving common killer of "big ideas": the chicken-egg problem*.
 - Use part of the Kudos to support development and maintenance of the set
of core global human-centric cooperation services, for example
human-centric Social Networking Service.


*Validbook* – a real world attempt to fix SNSs issues, as well as to add
security and privacy to other core cooperation services: emails (end-to-end
encrypted emails), money transfer (self-sovereign wallet), documents
signing (human friendly digital documents signing = self-sovereign
ownership).
Validbook Kudos – is an attempt to implement a Self-Sovereign Identity
Based Business Model.
Validbook Social – is an attempt to implement a human-centric Social
Networking Service.
More details about Validbook idea at:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-credentials/2018May/0024.html

Looking forward to hear what you think about described issues and fixes in
theory and about proposed practical solution - Validbook implementation.
If you are interested to get involved into the development of the next
generation Social Networking Service and other Cooperation Services (in any
role - investor, developer, thinker) let me know and we can make Validbook
a reality!

--Bohdan

[1] -
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-credentials/2018Jun/0116.html
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk&feature=youtu.be&t=21m21s
[3] -
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/12/chamath-palihapitiya-my-kids-get-no-screen-time-whatsoever.html
[4] -
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-the-evidence-and-the-unknowns
[5] - https://mondaynote.com/facebook-has-a-big-tobacco-problem-f801085109a
[6] - http://www.robertlustig.com/hacking/
[7] - https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked

--
Bohdan Andriyiv,
Validbook Foundation (to be incorporated),
Chief Maintainer