How to ensure that this service is practically viable in the long-term? In order for this service to be a public good it needs to be clear about its responsibilities, and given recent history, one of these responsibilities is to avoid boom and bust.

A fundamental requirement is that the organisation is able to sustain rapid and long-term growth in a way that retains its basic shape.

Organisation: Commercial or Non-profit?

Should the enterprise as a whole be commercial? This may be the biggest practical consideration, so we bring it up at the outset and regard it of paramount importance to consider long term influences.

If it is, then how does it deal with corporates? Corporates are trying to purchase the rights to virtual space in a similar manner to physical space1. The danger is that profit encourages greed and other unskilful states of mind. In 2012 Facebook launched its initial public offering (IPO) with a market capitalisation of around $16 billion dollars and a very rapid increase in value afterwards.  But what were the non-monetary costs?  The following observations of a programme producer at that time should cause concern when considering human well-being: “Everything Facebook is doing to develop as a business, such as the forthcoming personal Timelines, is designed to get people even more hooked.”2 In other words, it was intentionally fostering addictive behaviour3, an assertion lent weight by the BBC’s Money Programme (which reports on the world of finance and big business); it described how the marketing strategies are arguably promoting addictive behaviour4.  Years later, these suspicions were confirmed when several senior executives spilled the beans. Most notably, Sean Parker, who was formerly president of Facebook remarked in an interview with Axios:

God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.  The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.

Mike Allen November 9, 2017, Axios

Furthermore, ads in Facebook aim for “demand generation” and appear to users based on the their profile and not reflecting any particular search. Once again, there is the use of content aggregation leading to consumer behaviour driven by powerful market forces and discussions about ethical issues are funnelled into issues of data privacy rather than opening up to broader concerns of how we should behave.

The evidence so far from profit-making corporates listed on the stock exchanges indicates a seemingly irresistible pressure to open up their commercial systems to the nth degree for invasive marketing purposes.  Startups and other companies that are not just listed tend to join the conveyor belt, fuelled by venture capitalists looking for the next gold mine, preferably yielding profit sooner rather than later.   This is unlikely to be helpful for building deeper long-term relationships and so strongly suggests that the enterprise itself should be a non-commercial venture of limited value to speculators in corporate markets. However, just as for the Internet as a whole, this doesn’t preclude commercial activities within the Network, but such commercial activities will have to operate according to the protocols and rules of the SNS.

But in the present global economic environment, can this service really avoid the overt consumerism that would go fundamentally against its design? If there do not exist or do not emerge new forms and systems of economics, then it will be a major challenge for Sigala to send a clear signal in the present environment about its priorities from the outset by being established as a not-for-profit initiative. Even so, a non-commercial orientation is considered the safer long-term option in terms of safeguarding independence and upholding the original ethos; the alternative is to be subject to market forces that become exceedingly strong the greater the global reach. The big business discussions on the commercial viability of Facebook are powerful reminders of this as its design has been steered into favour with advertisers, and was driven to a launch IPO. Fortunately, the Internet is not without precedents of large-scale non-profit ventures, Wikipedia being a prominent example.

Furthermore, we distinguish between the way the organisation itself is run (commercial or non-profit) and the activities that may be conducted on the network. Even in the real world there are non-profit organisations in what’s generally assumed to be a for-profit sector, for example the energy supplier Ebico, founded in 1998. This indicates that the SNS should not be unduly restrictive in types of activity; in principle, the system supports not-for-profit and for-profit modes of business.

In order to evaluate this, we can explore how the architecture can support either or both

Long-term Network Prosperity

A sustainable network should be one that prospers over an extended period. SNS are often regarded as communities, so is there any ancient wisdom that we might apply? The Buddha indicated seven conditions for the Vajjians to prosper:

  1. have frequent gatherings, and their meetings are well attended
  2. assemble and disperse peacefully and attend to their affairs in concord.
  3. neither enact new decrees nor abolish existing ones, but proceed in accordance with their ancient constitutions [political stability, observing the law]
  4. show respect, honour, esteem, and veneration towards their elders and think it worthwhile to listen to them
  5. refrain from abducting women and maidens of good families and from detaining them [respect; equal rights]
  6. show respect, honour, esteem, and veneration towards their shrines, both those within the city and those outside it, and do not deprive them of the due offerings as given and made to them formerly
  7. protect and guard the Arahats, so that those who have not come to the realm yet might do so, and those who have already come might live there in peace

[DN II. 775; A. IV. 20]

Even this macro society analysis indicates the need for respectful inter-personal relationships;

  • items 1 and 2 are about collective meetings conducted in an amicable manner
  • item 3 is about respecting well established rules of law and not introducing too much radical change in a short space of time.
  • item 6 is respecting cherished property, and particularly making offerings, acts of merit, transpersonal transactions.
  • items 4,5, and 7 about respect to others, each group treated in their own special way.

Funding Streams

Funding can operate at many different levels. This section provides just a few pointers, but whatever approaches or methods are adopted should benefit from the inherent architecture.

  • Philanthropy – even in times of major economic downturn there are major benefactors. As an SNS that is ostensibly for the benefit people rather than bank balances, Sigala could be an attractive SNS for those who wish to make a positive impact on the lives of many.
  • Voluntary service – gifts of time and expertise.

Income may be generated by the following:

  • The application layer can provide revenue through advertising tailored to a user’s profile and activities, in the manner of Google’s Adsense (ads appearing tailored to user profiles) and Adwords in product searches. As this is pseudo personal, the various caveats about informed consent apply.

    This is similar to LinkedIn’s social marketing, which “may sometimes pair an advertiser’s message with social content from LinkedIn’s network in order to make the ad more relevant. When LinkedIn members recommend people and services, follow companies, or take other actions, their name/photo may show up in related ads shown to you. Conversely, when you take these actions on LinkedIn, your name/photo may show up in related ads shown to LinkedIn members. By providing social context, we make it easy for our members to learn about products and services that the LinkedIn network is interacting with.” 

    However, new features like this should be off by default when introduced otherwise they are unsolicited interruptions in social communication.  The topic of interruptions (or interventions) is very important, especially in terms of significant cognitive effects, and is treated separately in the context of the user interface. 
  • Commission can be made through online payments, both direct (e.g. for apps) and indirect, through agreements with online traders.

With the right design we may have a reasonable basis for sustainability, but we need to consider the service identity and how we may spread the word — so it’s time to look at branding.

Notes 

1 Drugmaker Merck challenges Facebook after ‘losing’ page, BBC News, 25 November 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15888843

2 Charles Miller, Can Facebook turn 800m users into a $100bn business?: Inside Facebook http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15962476

3 Technically, this is described in Buddhism by the Pali term as pamādaṭṭhānānuyoga, ‘a yoke, providing a basis of heedlessness’, from which is derived the compound jūtappamādaṭṭhānānuyoga, gambling.

4 The Money Programme: Inside Facebook presented by Emily Maitlis http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017ywty/Mark_Zuckerberg_Inside_Facebook/

5 From the Mahaparinibbana Sutta (The Last Days of the Buddha). A translation available at:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.16.1-6.vaji.html