Cute cat theory of Web 2.0
This is a really fascinating talk that was given at the recent ETech conference. One of the slides really caught my attention, and I think I agree with it. The text: "Hypothesis: Sufficiently useable read/write platforms will attract porn. If there’s no porn, the tool doesn’t work. If there are no activists, the tool doesn’t work well."
His larger point, is that
Blocking banal content on the internet is a self-defeating proposition. It teaches people how to become dissidents - they learn to find and use anonymous proxies, which happens to be a key first step in learning how to blog anonymously. Every time you force a government to block a web 2.0 site - cutting off people’s access to cute cats - you spend political capital. Our job as online advocates is to raise that cost of censorship as high as possible.
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2 Comments
Dagmar commented on 18 March 2008:well...what is banal to some is inciting to violence to others. i suppose if there were naked black males being sold all over the web in racist ways that would seem less bana than selling cute cats?
Ouch! Dagmar that is NOT the point. I don't condone pornography in any way. I just agree with the author of the article that any new communications tool that works even halfway will attract pornography (human sinfulness does tend to express itself regularly!), and that any GOOD communication tools will attract activists.