For those of you familiar with RADAR (Radio Detection And Ranging) and SONAR (Sound Navigation And Ranging), there are similarities between these technologies in two ways: 1) they both emit a wave form and detect the reflection of that wave form, using time variations to judge distance, and 2) they both have a secondary “shadow” capability, that is they can also detect the presence or absence of objects by what doesn’t get reflected or which reflections are masked because something blocks that reflection.
Yes, I know, the guys whose grasp of these technologies is more current than mine will be better able to explain the mechanics, but what I’m highlighting here is that the absence of a signal can be as meaningful as the presence of a signal.
If you send out a wave, expecting it to reflect off an object, and your return wave pattern has a “hole” (or shadow) in it, this “shadow” may indicate that either something blocked your outbound signal or something blocked or attenuated the reflected signal. Alternatively, something may have deflected your signal away from you, causing an absence of reflection where it’s expected.
Sometimes, when you’re scanning for activity, the value of “nothing” can be that you know where you can fly or sail or where a barrier isn’t
And sometimes, the “nothing” tells you something more ominous.
This is where I bend the analogy a little, into the field of electronic publishing.
Let’s say you run a blog. Let’s say that an indication of how well you’re reaching your chosen public (or at least some public) is the number of replies or likes or shares you see daily or weekly. Or perhaps your favored metric is how much money advertisers send to you based on their measurement of the traffic which includes viewings of their ad content. That’s not entirely unlike a RADAR reflection return or a SONAR ping. You send out content, and the comment/like/share/etc. activity (or advertising checks) is the return signal that tells you that you are reaching people.
What happens when your return signal suddenly falls off?
You immediately start troubleshooting. What’s causing this “shadow” in your signal?
You look around at all the places your signal is supposed to hit and do a quick thumbnail analysis. Hmm, my blog traffic from regular readers hasn’t really changed. The referrals from my third-party exchange posts are holding steady. Oh, wait, what’s this? A large, major social media site is showing much lower traffic than usual. MUCH lower traffic. That’s odd. The number of posts is about normal, and the content isn’t that different from normal, but the return signal just isn’t happening.
You remark on it to a friend. They’re seeing much the same thing. You talk to others who do basically the same thing you do. Everyone of them says “I thought it was just me!” You do a little more analysis. You discover that there are undeniable similarities and detectable patterns in the “shadows” on your publishing RADAR. The holes in your return traffic line up surprisingly well with the holes in their traffic.
At length it becomes clear: there is a large blockage of some kind right where that major social media outlet sits. It’s having secondary effects on your other traffic, but it’s clear that the primary shadow comes from this (formerly very reflective) medium.
As you look and listen, and sift through the chaff, you finally grasp what’s happening: your signal, and the signal of selected people like you is being attenuated, and it’s not being done by some fuzzy “algorithm” that impersonally regulates your exposure by tracking “trends” and applying “ratings” based on computed “interest” within the community. Or something like that.
No, the signal that’s being “attenuated” — blocked, filtered, masked — all fits a certain profile. And it’s a political profile. And it’s getting worse.
Yes, you are being profiled and your traffic is being systematically deflected away from the people who would normally see it. People who “follow” your signal are simply not getting normal updates of your signal, so they don’t read it, so they don’t respond. So they don’t see the ads. So revenue falls off, into a kind of shadow of its own.
If you’re doing this simply to share information with people who are interested, then the effect is that your communication is being cut.
If you’re doing this because you’re being paid by advertisers, then your revenue just got cut.
Cutting communication is an oppressive thing. If this major social media outlet (MSMO) has no effective competition — making them an effective monopoly — this amounts to blatant censorship.
What can you do? You can complain to the people running the MSMO. Yeah, that’s not working. They’ve already preemptively claimed it’s not happening.
So who ya gonna believe? The honest, trustworthy people casting shadows in your signals, or your lying eyes?
Once you’ve realized that the machinery of an effective monopoly has been “tuned” to interfere with your signal, what do you do? Where do you go?
Well, as always, people with money seek power, people with power seek money, and people with both seek control. The “equal-and-opposite-reaction” to this sort of thing is that those made of sterner stuff than the average social lamb look for alternatives and, not finding them, sometimes start their own.
For example, there’s a new kid in town in the social media space, and their tagline is “no censorship.” There’s a write-up on them. Have a peek: http://observer.com/2017/05/minds-open-sourced-social-media-facebook-competitor/
https://www.minds.com/ — I signed up there this evening. Kind of an exploratory thing.
I’ve heard of others, and I’m tracking them down, too.
I’ve also toyed with the idea of starting my own service aimed at folks who are just plumb tired of being alternately spied on and spammed at. I know there’s a market. All I have to do is confirm that I have a hundred thousand or so interested people, willing to throw a buck at the idea. Low tech. Low bandwidth. Low exposure. Under the RADAR.
Who knows, maybe there can be a way to send out your signal without having someone cast shadows in your transmission.
I contend that, once we wake up and turn our backs on the Soylent Green of social media monopolies (you are the product, you are bought and sold), we can engage in unencumbered signal.
Signals without shadows.
~~ CitizenScribe
