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Putin is continuing Russian Imperialism

Dear Editor:

A recent letter calling for negotiations between Russia's invading armies and a peaceful Ukraine is ridiculous and uninformed.

Russia breaks international laws and treaties. The latest examples are: Putins statement, Ukraine does not exist, and Russias shelling the seaport, Odessa, despite the just-signed treaty allowing the export of Ukrainian grain to starving populations.

Putin is continuing Russian imperialism and Ukraine is fighting for its existence. Ukraine has survived the Holodomor (a genocide by an artificial famine) inflicted by the previous communist regime and is now fighting an invader accused of war crimes and genocide.

Taras Makar

Penticton

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it

Dear Editor:

It was very disappointing to read the Time for the Ukraine to negotiate with Russia (Herald,July 22).

If Russia was attacking Canada would the letter writer be giving the same advice? Ukraine is fighting for their very existence and he is grumbling about war profiteering. Shouldnt our government address the price gouging, rather than abandoning the Ukrainians?

Appeasing Russia through negotiations will just encourage further Russian adventurism. Remember how effective appeasement was with the Nazis. It did not lead to peace in our time.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it and Winston Churchill knew what he was talking about.

Steen Petersen

Nanaimo

Putin, like Pope Francis should offer an apology

Dear Editor:

Russias Putin could do well to follow the example of Pope Francis penitential pilgrimage to Indigenous Canada and Putin apologize and seek forgiveness and reconciliation from the Ukraine people for his slaughter of the Ukraine innocents.

Joe Schwarz

Penticton

Health-care workers in B.C. deserve our highest praise

Dear Editor:

We recently used the ambulance service, and one of us is now an inpatient in Victoria. I worked for more than 30 years in a regional referral hospital, so I know what the workload used to be.

I am astonished that hospital staff are able to retain their composure and kindness given the overwhelming workload that they now experience.

At least in my day we had peaks and valleys of workload and were given time to relax and breathe; not any more.

My thanks and my best wishes to health-care workers everywhere in B.C. in these troubled times.

Clifford Dezell

Victoria

No desire to engage in personal attacks

Dear Editor:

While I may not agree with others opinions, I do respect the right of individuals to hold an opinion and to express that opinion. I therefore will continue to present facts, but I have no desire to engage in personal attacks.

The majority of professional people who read about or listen to Jordan Peterson realize that he has gotten his reputation by stating the obvious. No more, no less. Google: What do people think of Jordan Peterson? Read his professional peers comments. As Peterson himself stated, I am an academic persona non grata.

Peterson has been suspended from Twitter for fat-shaming a lady and refusing to apologize. This is completely in character. Carry out some critical analysis of his comments and views. Read his 12 rules that are just common sense and ridiculous.

Pierre Poilievre is a Stephen Harper protg, but I understand the current anxiety of Canadians who are concerned about global inflation and the cost of living, but to continuously blame the Liberals for global inflation is not justifiable. And investors reluctance to invest in fossil fuels is global not just a Canadian Liberal problem.

If you support Pierre Poilievre, then at least admit that you prefer: a balanced budget over social safety nets; freedom from mandatory mask wearing no matter the danger to others; freedom to protest no matter the disruption of peoples lives and traffic movement; freedom from mandatory vaccinations no matter the health risks to others; freedom for unqualified (cannot meet Canadian standards) immigrants to practice their professions; freedom for oil companies to drill without meeting environmental standards; and the list goes on.

If you support the foregoing that is your choice and I respect your right to have that preference; however, I do not support your choice.

As a Humanist, that is my right, and I defend that right.

I cannot imagine the attack-dog antics of Pierre Poilievre as the Canadian prime minister, and certainly not on the world stage.

Patrick MacDonald

Kelowna

When you worry, you make it double

Dear Editor:

Most people, especially those on fixed incomes, have every right to be incensed about the unprecedented high cost of groceries and gasoline.

Recently my wife and I went grocery shopping and then filled up the gas tank of our 1998 Buick.

On the way home I listened to myself moaning and groaning about the rapidly rising prices for almost everything. Little by little I came to the realization I shouldnt let things I have no control over ruin my day. I decided to look on the bright side and figuratively put on rose-coloured glasses.

Immediately I realized the groceries and gas were an investment, not an expense.

The groceries in the trunk and the gas in the tank had doubled the value of our car. You can call me a cockeyed optimist but my frown instantly turned upside down.

Thats when I recalled those insightful words in the 1988 hit song, Dont Worry Be Happy, by Bobby McFerrin namely, In every life we have some trouble but when you worry you make it double.

Lloyd Atkins

Vernon

Pamphlet an attack on Canadas history

Dear Editor:

As a Canadian citizen I am absolutely appalled to learn that The Hon. Ahmed Hussen, the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion found it appropriate to spend $268,400 taxpayer dollars to develop and distribute the document titled Confronting and Preventing Hate in Canadian Schools. This document labels the Conservative Party as racist and directly attacks the Canadian Ensign, to list only a few.

It is true that the Canadian Ensign bears the crosses of Saint George, Saint Patrick and Saint Andrew. Yes, it bears the crests of France, Scotland, Ireland and England all Christian countries reflective of Canadas founding as far back as the early 1600s.

Members of the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Army fought with distinction and died under the Canadian Ensign in both World Wars and the Korean War.

I and my classmates sang God Save The Queen and Oh Canada while the Canadian Ensign was raised.

Mr. Hussen owes Canadian veterans who are buried overseas and who fought and died for his freedom an apology.

Bill Shumborski

Kelowna

Many reasons to stop feeding the ducks

Dear Editor:

When I was a kid, I remember seeing signs in Beacon Hill Park telling people why it was a bad idea to feed the wildlife (especially the ducks). This led me to not feed the ducks anymore.

I know a reason why feeding the ducks is a bad idea, a reason not listed on the sign: feeding endangers the ducklings.

When mother ducks see birdseed, they often get distracted by the food and leave their ducklings alone in the water (the ducklings seem to mostly prefer bugs). This leaves the ducklings unprotected.

Also, the birdseed seems to attract crows and seagulls, which both prey on ducklings. I recently saw a family of ducklings eating seeds dangerously close to a group of crows and a seagull.

I also saw another mother who only had one little duckling left (she had around 10 earlier in the week).

Something to think about the next time you want to feed the ducks.

Emma Dingman

Victoria

Link:
Letters to the Editor: Wednesday, July 27, 2022 | Opinion | pentictonherald.ca - pentictonherald.ca

Last summer, I wrote about how Portnoys particular brand of transgressive boorishness served as an inspiration to Republican politicians eager to capitalize on the backlash to newly established progressive social norms around things like gender pronoun usage and diversity, equity and inclusion practices. But that alliance was never ideological it was aesthetic. To a certain kind of secular, mostly apolitical Barstool bro, the party of evangelical pro-lifers might not have been an ideal fit, but it was certainly more appealing than the party of woke scolds and stuffy bosses across the aisle.

Now that the Supreme Court has handed social conservatives their most significant ideological victory of the modern political era, those voters will have to choose: Is it worth giving sanction to an overtly religious, mostly unpopular political project simply to own the libs? Portnoy himself explicitly says no. But cultural backlash is as unpredictable as it is powerful, and its place at the heart of the modern GOP means that how a particular type of independent, attitudinally conservative voter responds could shape America for years to come.

To look at the empirical evidence in so much as it exists around opinion on abortion rights, one might think that Republicans victory over Roe is somewhat Pyrrhic. The most recent data from the Pew Research Center, collected at the beginning of July after the Dobbs decision, shows that 57 percent of the population disagrees with the decision itself (including a not-insignificant 29 percent of Republicans); the only group expressing overwhelmingly strong approval is white evangelicals. Sixty-two percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

But dig deeper into the data and youll find that support for abortion varies considerably based on the duration of pregnancy, especially taking into account voters geographic distribution. There are also, of course, the inherent limitations of public opinion polling, as well as the relative rarity of single-issue voters (among whom anti-abortion voters outnumber their counterparts). Its not quite accurate to say the GOP has summarily alienated an electorate that otherwise seemed prime to embrace it in this falls midterms.

So one might look to another indicator, albeit one lacking the veneer of empiricism that polling maintains: The opinions of thinkers and leaders in the conservative movement. What actual politicians say is unreliable, as beholden as they are to pesky primary voters and wealthy, ideological donors. What about those responsible for curating the vibes of the modern conservative movement?

At the beginning of June, the National Review fellow and social-conservative wunderkind Nate Hochman wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled What Comes After the Religious Right? In it, he expanded on the somewhat declinist view of the conservative Catholic writer Matthew Walther, who coined the term Barstool conservative in a 2021 op-ed for The Week writing that, While the old religious right will see much to like in the new cultural conservatism, they are partners, rather than leaders, in the coalition. Hochman argues that although a figure as non-pious as Trump (who could plausibly claim the mantle of the Barstool president) might have empowered social conservatives, theyre too much of an electoral minority to succeed without their comparatively libertine coalitional partners.

Hochmans insight invites a similar reflection from the other side of the aisle. Once upon a time, as the writer Matt Yglesias recently pointed out in response to Portnoys pro-Roe stance, chauvinistic bros were reliable Democratic voters, who made common cause with realpolitik-ing feminists willing to overlook the Clinton-era partys affective cultural conservatism in exchange for political wins. Both were opposed to the Moral Majority-era sanctimony of the Reagan-Bush GOP, the ethos of the alliance perhaps best summed up by a notorious quote regarding Clinton from the former Time White House reporter Nina Burleigh: Id be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.

For various reasons beyond the scope of this essay, the salience of cultural politics has increased in American life to an extent that makes that alliance impossible. Conservative thought leaders now find themselves at the same crossroads liberals once did: What price are they willing to pay what are they willing to sacrifice, or excuse to keep such fickle, secular, Portnoy-like independent voters in the fold?

What are conservative thought leaders willing to sacrifice, or excuse to keep such fickle, secular, Dave Portnoy-like independent voters in the fold?|Michael Reaves/Getty Images

As the GOPs most reliable and motivated voting bloc, the anti-abortion movement is clearly not going anywhere. To the chagrin and fear of liberals, and the hope of the would-be New Right, theres some evidence that they might not have to. Looking at the replies to Portnoys initial post-Roe tweet, alongside the criticism from hard-right figures like Dan Bongino (as well as Hochman himself), one can see a slew of comments from average, non-blue-check-sporting Barstool fans, protesting that all the Supreme Court did was let it be a state issue, or that he should simply stick to sports.

This is where Barstool per se ceases to be a useful framework through which to understand the shifts occurring in American politics today. (As with any brand with as massive a reach as Portnoys, its fans are more ideologically diverse than a liberals snap judgment would assume.) The angst inspired by Portnoys pro-abortion rights turn reflects a much broader phenomenon: Just as secular and religious GOP voters are split, theres an even narrower division among those who are simply alienated by the modern left and those who are outright anti-feminists, especially among young voters.

The anti-feminism of todays young conservatives takes a few different forms. There is, of course, the outright hate spread on forums like 4chan and by trolls like Nick Fuentes; the casual, fratty misogyny of more mainstream figures like Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler, who in a live streamed rant after his Jan. 6 committee testimony called his female former coworkers thots and hoes; and the faux-erudition of New Right leaders like Sen. Josh Hawley, who in a keynote address to the National Conservatism Conference decried the lefts attack on men in America. (Its not just America, either: In South Korea, youth anti-feminism helped propel a conservative president to the Blue House.) Young anti-feminists see a world where women are at least notionally more empowered than ever, yet no one seems to be happy about it. They look to the past for solutions in lieu of inventing new ones for the moment.

And there are plenty of historical examples, both religious and secular, to draw from. In her 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, the feminist writer Susan Faludi described a taxonomy of anti-feminist reaction to the advances of the Equal Rights Amendment era, from Christian leaders like Paul Weyrich who promised to overturn the present power structure of the country to the quasi-paganism of the poet Robert Bly, who encouraged real men to reclaim their cultural birthright by psychologically isolating themselves from women. Faludi sums up their shared philosophy as the belief that the very steps that have elevated womens position have actually led to their downfall.

One might wonder what Faludi, in an era where Weyrich and Bly have inspired successors in figures like the (now-disgraced) megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll and the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, would have to say about the backlash to womens more recent advances. To borrow a rhetorical move from Woody Allen, whom Bly especially hated, we dont have to wonder; I happen to have Ms. Faludi right here: Writing in the New York Times in response to Roes overturning, she argues that feminisms growing entwinement with celebrity culture is a primary culprit in making it more vulnerable than ever to a more pernicious backlash, one that has never relented, one that has brought us the calamity of the Alito draft opinion.

This is why social conservatives find themselves at a moment of not just dog-that-caught-the-car peril, but potential promise. The Courts ruling was only made possible by the combined forces of secular conservatism, via Trumps mass heterodox appeal, and the decades of concentrated effort by a minority of religious activists. Like with Weyrich and Bly, or Driscoll and Peterson, anti-feminism can take many forms and have many motivations, but the basic ressentiment it taps into transcends religion, class or partisanship, and is stubbornly persistent. By subsuming life-or-death social issues under the auspices of Lean In moments and social media slap downs over whether Taylor Swift is or isnt a feminist, as Faludi wrote, liberals and feminists have risked erasing the distinction in the publics mind between serious material outcomes and such symbological slap-fights.

That possibility conjures a world where arguments about womens health outcomes, or whether theres a feminist case against abortion, or over pro-family Republican economic policies might become immaterial as abortion becomes an entirely different, more recognizably modern kind of culture-war issue. We simply dont know yet whether the Barstool cohort of the modern GOP will look around at a post-Roe world and decide their party has gone too far. But if they dont, and Trumps coalition holds, it will be the most powerful symbol yet of Americas transition to a symbolic mass politics of cultural grievance.

Those politics still can have very real policy consequences, as millions of women in red states are now discovering. Improbable as it might seem, whether or not said consequences endure or even spread might depend on what occurs in the hearts and minds, and on the ballots, of men like Dave Portnoy.

Read the rest here:
The Barstool Bros' Split Over Abortion Could Determine the Future of the GOP - POLITICO

I

My preference for female artistes (outside groups) has two sides in a balance. On one side there is Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Carole King, and Joni Mitchell. On the other, there's Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone.

There are others like Olivia Newton John, Mary Hopkin, and Sarah Vaughan, but I listen to the above seven more.

Baez, Joplin, King, and Mitchell pushed the boundaries of songwriting for women. They were storytellers telling their own stories, and stories of their time.

Fitzgerald, Holiday, and Simone were singers who gave life to the great American songbooks and composer-songwriters of their time. However, Fitzgerald had her fair contribution to songwriting. Holiday also wrote a few songs.

When I reached the end of my formative years, these seven female voices became my lighthouse.

II

Aman Bhai, a friend who happens to be a child psychiatrist once told me, if you treat a child as an adult, they'll respond back as an adult. I remembered this. When I became a father, I would encourage serious and open discussions with my daughter, Annapurna. Whether because of this or not, Annapurna has shared things with me ever since she and I can remember. This gave both of us a portal to transcend a generation divide.

A couple years ago, I asked Annapurna to give me a list of some albums I could present her in vinyl (LP). A few days later she gave me her list. The second serial was circled. It was Amy Winehouse's Back to Black.

Annapurna told me, "Listen to this album. You'll like Amy."

I had no idea who Amy Winehouse was. The only guess I could make was from her surname. It was evident she was Jewish and white. I now had to listen to the "Back to Black" single.

The 10-second intro sent shivers down my spine. The moment Amy started to sing, I was blown away. Had I listened blindfold, I'd have thought I was listening to a black voice. When she spoke, I was even more surprised. She had a British accent. London Cockney to be precise.

The seven female voices that tuned my ears are all from the USA, with Joni from Canada. I never came across one British female voice worthy to be inducted into my personal "hall of fame". And here I was listening to such a voice that was full of power and majesty.

My curiosity didn't end here. Amy's voice was tearing emotions out with honesty. The lyrics were unexpectedly explicit, but honest. The voice was raw, natural, and full of melancholy. In the melancholy there was an emptiness.

I never heard a female voice with this emptiness. I had to find out more.

III

Back to Black has eleven songs. Each song is different, but they all string into a common thread. Like Joni Mitchell's Blue (1971), Back to Black is an autobiography of a young girl trying to understand relationships. Like Carole King's Tapestry (1971), the album navigates through different experiences of a young girl.

Back to Black songs are songs of love and betrayal. They're not sugary. If love can kiss, it can also bleed. This is the freshness and honesty I never found in depth in the song writing of Baez, Joplin, King, and Mitchell.

There was still something different with Amy. In her voice, you can feel blues, gospel, and jazz oozing. However, it wasn't polished. It was raw. Only Billie Holiday, in the seven female voices that were my lighthouse, had that raw voice.

Once you hear a voice like that, you know there's a story behind all this.

IV

The more I explored Amy through her studio albums and live performances, the more it became evident, that she wasn't listening to sugary pop while growing up. Coming from a musical family, and her paternal grandma Cynthia knowing the jazz musician Ronnie Scott, intimately told you what type of songs her young ears were subject to.

Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to The Moon" was one of the first songs Amy listened, at the age of two. She would sing the song to cheer her up.

While growing up, she listened to Motown girl groups. She listened to gospel voices in Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin. She listened to the jazz of Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Thelonius Monk. Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday also trained her ears. Carole King, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Alanis Morissette, and others were also with her in her formative years.

Amy only wanted to be a jazz singer. When she applied to the Sylvia Young Theatre, she wrote in her essay, she wanted people to hear her voice and forget their troubles. Many certainly did. She also wrote songs to forget her troubles. Sadly, she failed to make ends meet.

Growing up near and later settling in Camden in London exposed Amy to the bright and dark sides of popular culture. Camden is a place that makes dreams. And dreams can go either way. They can be fairy tales or can end up in nightmares. When you live between the two in a place like Camden, you need to be managed well. Sadly, that wasn't the case with Amy, before or after her fame. Her death was just the end, but her troubles started well before that fateful day, July 23, 2011, when she never woke up.

V

Amy Winehouse was the missing link in my balance of seven female voices. The balance needed a voice that would resemble both its sides. Amy was that voice. Through Amy I explored Adele, Fiona Apple, Billie Eilish and some others. Somehow, they lack that raw, honest, and sincere emotion in their voice, and the lyrics came so naturally with Amy.

Although Amy is no longer with us, "I'm not ashamed even if the guilt kills me" to say that she was a breath of fresh air while she sang, and fresher now as we look back with a smile on our faces on an artiste who was honest and natural.

Asrar Chowdhury is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University. He is the author of Echoes in SHOUT of the Daily Star. Email: asrarul@gmail.com; asrarul@juniv.edu

See more here:
Remembering the honest and natural voice of Amy Winehouse - The Daily Star

For years, even with concerns over privacy and content moderation lingering in the background, Meta has managed to grow its sales. But that stunning growth appears to be ending.

In a grim second quarter earnings report on Wednesday, the company formerly known as Facebook revealed it had missed on both the top and bottom lines for the quarter. It reported earnings per share of $2.46; analysts had expected $2.59. At the same time it posted revenue of $28.82 billion versus the $28.94 billion analysts expected.

Meta also delivered a sobering outlook for its next quarter, anticipating a further softening in the advertising market, from which the company draws almost all its revenues. Meta expects Q3 revenues of between $26 billion and $28.5 billiona notable drop from analyst expectations of $30.38 billion.

Wednesdays news underscored whats become increasingly clear over the last few months: Against the backdrop of a weakened economy that may be headed for a recession, Meta is facing an inflection point in its product and mission.

Investors have been long bracing for Metas advertising segment to weaken, due in large part to Apples iOS privacy update.In 2021 Apple began requiring apps, including Facebook and Instagram, to ask users permission before tracking their movements. Marketers have also been pulling some ad spend as they prepare for consumers to respond to economic concerns.

Facebooks awful quarter and weak outlook further underline the view that advertisers have been cutting back on spending as the overall economy battles with inflation, higher interest rates, and shifting consumer patterns, said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com in an email.

Notably, Meta posted its first-ever year-over-year quarterly revenue decline since its 2012 market debut. Revenues were down 1% from the same quarter in 2021.

Meta shares, however, dipped only a few percentage points in after-hours trading.

(Wednesdays after-hours share prices offered at least a sliver of good news, given that Meta shares plunged 22% in extended trading earlier this year after the company reported its first-ever dip in user numbers.)

Facebook and Instagram ads have historically been popular with marketers due to Metas ability to target users. But the companys ad unit has become less effective due to the privacy changes and that appears to be bringing down the cost.

In the second quarter of 2022, ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 15% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 14% year-over-year, the earnings report states.

Its not just Meta thats struggled this season. Companies that rely on ad spend, like Snap and Twitter, have reported weak ad dollars, citing a decrease in marketer spending due to economic uncertainty and Apples changes.

The poor earnings results come in the wake of Metas announcement that it plans to insert more TikTok-like short-form videos into the feeds of users. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on the defensive very early on in the call with analysts:

I want to be clear that we are still ultimately a social company, Zuckerberg said during a call with analysts. Zuckerberg said Meta hopes that suggesting more content from people users dont know (such as short-form video) will inspire more engagement among friends and family, and, in turn, more video viewing. He said a flywheel effect would develop.

Read the original post:
Meta's business takes a dive as it pivots from old-school social networking - Fast Company

Web3 is in a weird place. Some existing platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, are tiptoeing into the internets next phase with NFT profile pictures, the metaverse and crypto. But according to Christopher Gulczynski, one of Tinders co-founders, a former Bumble CPO and a former Facebook engineering manager, those platforms cant ever compete in what Web3 will be.

There's so much development happening in Web3, said Gulczynski, who was responsible for Tinders swipe right, swipe left on matches. All the tech startups are based and rooted in Web3. It's stuff that you haven't heard about yet because everyone's building.

Gulczynski and Zaven Nahapetyan, a former engineering manager and organizational lead for Facebook, left their respective platforms to help build Niche, which lets people form communities around shared interests or topics, like sports or Taylor Swift. The platform is still in beta, with applications opening up on Monday. Gulczynski and Nahapetyan said members of a Niche community will act as part owners, and it wont rely on ads to generate revenue.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

What have your roles at Bumble and Facebook taught you about the current state of social media?

Zven Nahapetyan: I worked on social impact projects at Facebook. I did a lot of stuff with fighting misinformation, building the tools that prevent people from sharing content that we have flagged as fake news or other forms of misinformation. I did a lot of stuff with getting people to go out and vote and civic engagement efforts and voter registration efforts on both Facebook and Instagram. And then I started fundraisers, which raised $6-ish billion for charity.

But over time, I saw the negative consequences of that. And I started to realize that actually, even all of these things that I was doing weren't enough. And there are fundamental issues with the way that social media platforms like Facebook operate, the biggest of which being that the revenue is generated through ad dollars, which means ads need to be highly targeted and people need to spend a lot of time on their phone to see more ads, which means the platform needs to collect as much information as possible on its users in order to build to target these ads and to make the app more addictive. And that's a fundamental tension that is really hard for a company like Facebook to get away from, and Instagram as well. So I realized there has to be a better way for humans to connect, and we need to find a way to do that that doesn't rely on ad dollars to avoid these pitfalls that Facebook has fallen into.

Christopher Gulczynski: During my time at Tinder and Bumble, we made a really sticky product, and people spend a lot of time on it. At Bumble, we were averaging around like 90 minutes a day. That, I think, inherently is a lot of responsibility for what those people are going to do. What's the fallout in their lives, and how does it impact them?

So I think being part of those high-impact, high-visibility platforms has given us a real perspective on what our responsibility is now and what current state of things we're doing to people, how it's affecting our societies, how it's affecting people's psyches, like mental health. It's all a big responsibility for us, and now is the time to put a little intentionality behind it.

At what point during your time at these companies did you say, It'd be better for me to take a step back and do something else than stick with the company and try to change it from within?

Nahapetyan: It was after the 2020 election that felt like the culmination of everything that I had done at Facebook supporting that. And I was part of the Zoom call when we were discussing what to do about Trump declaring an early victory. Do we suspend his account? Do we put messages up and stuff like that? And that actually all went fairly well.

I feel like the story of Facebook and the 2020 election was that there wasn't really much of a story, which was a resounding success as far as the people on my team and the people I worked with were concerned. And that kind of felt like, OK, my work here is done; that's about as good as it's going to get. And now it's time to move on and try to do something bigger and better.

How are you defining social media in this conversation, because TikTok doesn't even consider itself a social media platform: It considers itself an entertainment space.

Nahapetyan: I would absolutely consider TikTok to be social media.

Gulczynski: 100%. Even if it is entertainment content, I think more people should be explicit about the things that you see on these platforms for entertainment purposes, but a lot of these people get their news from Facebook or TikTok.

Nahapetyan: I think part of why they might be doing that is because social media has such a bad rap, understandably. And actually for us, we've been pitching Niche as a social content platform rather than a social media or social networking app because it's got a negative connotation. So I would say TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, honestly LinkedIn, to some extent Reddit

Gulczynski: Discord, Slack, those types of communication models, even if you don't have a network network, or it's not media, you're still connecting with people and talking.

Facebook is moving away from Friends, and Instagram is trying to put more of an emphasis on video, which is less about having a connection with your college roommates or your high school friends than it is about content that Instagram thinks you might like. Is social media taking on a new meaning? How is it defined now?

Gulczynski: We're seeing the turn of what we would call social media, right? Facebook is not going to focus on following people anymore. There's evolution happening. But at a certain point, theyre giant companies, and to switch your whole platform is a gigantic task. We were joking in the office, Remember when Facebook was a social network? It might turn into a giant advertising platform in 10 years. Who knows? It's definitely changing now. And people are like, What's the next evolution of quote-unquote social media? Or what's it going to be called?

Nahapetyan: A lot of this stuff began with Facebook, and people didn't really know what they would like, what sort of things they would share, how that would potentially be used against them. And I think Facebook was just a giant experiment, a 3 billion-person experiment. And we saw that there's actually some bad stuff that can come out of this, not premeditated. It was just happenstance. And so now we have the power of hindsight. And we can decide how to build apps and sort of what things to capitalize on.

I think a part of why Facebook and Instagram are moving in that direction is because it's less toxic and less problematic if you connect people around shared interests. That's what Chris and I are trying to do with Niche. I saw in Facebook internally, too, there's this move toward more groups and more closed spaces. Because if you connect people that have some hobbies or interests or something in common, that actually could lead to a better social media experience than just connecting people who went to school together or are family members. And so I think just based on those learnings and those trends, companies are moving more in that direction.

You said Niche is social content, not social media. Whats the difference?

Nahapetyan: The goal of Niche is to create communities of people around shared identity or profession or hobbies, interests, anything like that. And then give them ownership over those networks.

Instead of relying on ad dollars, we will be capturing some of the value that people are producing. One example might be a fan club for an artist, so you get all of the closest Taylor Swift fans, put them together in a group, they'll have partial ownership of this group. As the group gets bigger and becomes more popular, more people want to join, maybe they do exclusive events, maybe they do merch drops or something like that. All these people are actually part owners of that community much the same way that employees of a company might have options or stock in it. And so the idea is people can then buy and sell on the platform, and we can collect our revenues through those transaction fees, rather than relying on ads. We think that's a much healthier model.

One of the downsides that I could see happening would be if a community was particularly toxic or dangerous in some way, and they're all talking to one another. How would Niche handle that?

Nahapetyan: That's actually a question we get asked a lot. There's a few things that we've learned from Web 1.0, pre-Facebook and then Facebook days as well. The first is that it's actually better to have people to opt in to what sort of things they see rather than have the algorithm decide and share more of viral or divisive content. And so one example of that is, before Facebook, there were places like 4chan and just really toxic forums. But most people didn't spend any time there, and it kept that content separated and away from the rest of the internet. And what Facebook did is it actually made it really easy for different types of things to spread. So a person would be exposed to stuff that they wouldn't otherwise have seen.

If there are spaces that sort of engage in toxic behavior or shared nasty things, I think it's better to have them be self-contained rather than allow that content to be really easily spread from there to everyone else.

Whats the Web3 element of Niche?

Gulczynski: DAOs. Using that as a model of how to group people together, and that's the shared ownership, distributed ownership, incentivized engagement. So we feel that's the bedrock and foundation technology that we're using for Web3. The blockchain makes all this possible. I feel like we couldn't have done this without blockchain technology.

Do you see these other platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, moving in the direction of your idea of Niche?

Gulczynski: People are moving away from these giant social networks into more close-knit or more intimate spaces usually centered around shared interests. That's where we took our signal. So in a very general sense, I think that's the trend. We want to incentivize that more with the data structures and the Web3 stuff. We think thats where social is headed.

Nahapetyan: Yeah, I agree. And I think actually, we see that on even existing Web 2.0 platforms like on TikTok, people talk about architecture or baking or something. And this identity around the things they believe in or the spaces that they're a part of, it's what's making social media in the present age more exciting, and more compelling. And so I definitely think things are moving in that direction.

Niche is focused around becoming closer to Web3 standards. Would you say any other platforms are moving in the direction of Web3?

Gulczynski: The big ones are aware of it. And you can tell, theyre doing the NFT thing with your profile picture or whatever. But I don't know if those guys can ever compete in what Web3 will be. But there's so much development happening in Web3. All the tech startups are based and rooted in Web3. It's stuff that you haven't heard about yet because everyone's building. But from what we've seen, and the people that we've talked to, the companies that we see being built, this is going to be the future of the internet.

In five years, what would you say is the ideal user experience for social media?

Nahapetyan: You get stuff that is exactly what you're looking for. If you want to watch comedy videos, things just for the sake of entertainment, you can find it. If you're looking for something more serious or want professional networking, you can find that easily as well.

I think the ideal world is the place where people's needs are met in the way that they want and they have really compelling content. But it's stuff that they're looking for and not not stuff that spreads really easily or what the algorithms determine to be better for ad revenue. I hope that social media five years from now will be a lot healthier and we won't see a lot of the mental health issues we see with social media today.

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They wanted a less toxic, less problematic social network. So they built one. - Protocol