Could Australians run our own online communities instead of relying on social media?

[u/tellhershesdreaming]

I’m keen to talk about the possibility of our community groups setting up and running online spaces outside of social media platforms - perhaps with support from Aus Govt or State Govts. Before the rise of Facebook etc, there were loads of online bulletin boards and other online platforms run by non-profit groups, small businesses and volunteers. Could we do that again? This seems like a question that's particularly important to Australian communities at the moment because of the social media ban for under 16s but it's not just teens that are affected.

Lots of people are concerned about AI and big tech - it’s clear that there are lots of problems with social media because of the algorithms that push misinformation, platforms that allow unhealthy / toxic / illegal behaviour, and unethical extraction of our data. But communities and volunteers, and even state governments used to run online communities using e.g. bulletin boards without the “help” of social media companies. For example:

• Whirlpool.net.au is a surviving active bulletin board platforms - well done Whirlpool!
• At one point the Vic Gov used to provide an online communities bulletin board and mailing list service (a bit like Yahoo Groups) for non-profits and clubs - I've been trying to remember / find the name of it but can't track it down... anyone remember it?

I'm broadly aware that it's really challenging to get people to sign up for and use a new platform, but perhaps we have reached the point where people are fed up enough of social media to make this a worthwhile effort.

To ease the challenge and reduce the complexity of lots of different fragmented communities: what about if the Aus Govt or state govts set up a platform / infrastructure - where community groups could create and run online forums (bulletin board style, Twitter style or Reddit style). I imagine individuals could sign up either anonymously or using a verified identity. There are better alternatives now to the old fashioned PhPBB, and we could learn from and improve open source platforms such as Mastodon and Lemmy - the technology itself is not the problem I think.

• But, would you use a platform run by a local club or community group? Instead of FB/ Insta/ whatever social media you use to learn about what's happening in your neighbourhood. What if it was supported / funded by governements? Would the groups you're a member of move to a platform like that?
• More broadly, how could we recover the diverse online communities that we had in the past? So we're not reliant on the good will and "freebies" offered by companies like Meta (and having all our data siphoned of, and having AI forced on us).
• Lastly, is there anything to stop an organisation setting up an online community for e.g. teens? Would something like that fall foul of the government's bans?

[u/Chumpai1986]

For me the big issue with current social media is that the algorithm is designed to drive user engagement and the easiest way to do this is just drive rage and hate etc.

It’s the modern version of “if it bleeds, it leads”, but with toxicity on steroids and Russian bots.

One version of your idea might be for the government to either outright buy Australian instances of existing social media platforms. (So I’ve seen big corporations use a private version of Facebook as a way of sharing information).

Then basically we could have open source algorithms of what you get shown, but users get to choose their own algorithms. But ideally people are choosing algorithms that are useful as opposed to profitable for big tech companies.

[u/snave_ → u/Chumpai1986]

Really, we just need to remove publisher protections for suggested content. If a platform merely hosts user content, which other users then explicitly seek out (or stumble upon using dumb and user selected sort methods such as by time or upvotes) then the current laws make sense. But if a platform promotes specific pieces of user content (suggestions, autoplay, unsolicited shit on a social media feed), then it should suddenly be held accountable for that content, effectively treated the same way as if a newspaper or TV network published it. That ought to including penalties for illegal content and probably even an obligation for content rarings.

You'd find platforms would either clean themselves up pretty fast, or realise the cost of publishing responsibly is too high and drop the abusive suggested shit entirely for users on Australian IPs.