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What would Facebook’s new privacy-focused product look like?
Facebook is progressing, but still must do better (source)
Facebook F8 conference showed that Facebook wants to steer away from its past tumultuous years and present the users with a new image of Facebook, which explains why we now have a new icon for Facebook. Credit needs to be given where it’s due — Facebook has taken a lot of initiatives to become a more private platform, promising that ‘its future is privacy.’ However, users are understandably tired of hearing the same narrative with not much to show. As Google’s Sundar Pichai said at Google I/O conference this year, ‘the present is private,’ and it should be.
Hence, in hopes that Facebook could become a trusted, private platform, I wanted to share a few ideas on how Facebook and privacy could coexist. Facebook plays a role that is too large to be ignored by our society that simply boycotting it won’t solve any problems. As Chris Hughes puts it, “Facebook so dominates social networking, it faces no market-based accountability.”
However, as a venture capitalist, I can see the rationales behind the decisions they made and that they are genuinely trying hard to work out the best solution for all. It’s a tough act when your business model is based on the fact that your users are your product. Thus, here’s a few features that could help Facebook meet its promise and become the trusted platform again.
Verifying user identity by opting users into Facebook’s new stablecoin program
For anyone who has used Facebook’s marketplace and tried to find a sublet for the summer, the flow of spammers who fill up the comments are no longer a big news. This increases the proportion of irrelevant noise filling up the notifications, which weakens the credibility of the notifications telling anything important. If users begin checking their notifications less or simply skim through them, it could disengage the user and lead to users missing out on notifications that may have been relevant to them.
Remember when the only comments you see were ads? Yeah…
Moreover, bots and fake users weaken the experience of a group, which Facebook has overhauled in an attempt to make it a more important experience for the Facebook users. When users enter a group with 1,000 users and get very little response, then the lack of reciprocity they feel compared to the expectations they have leads to a very negative experience. Currently, there is no way to tell if the group is ghosted or filled with people who are welcoming and wants to engage with you about your interest.
Hence, verifying user accounts by having users share their bank information and also opt-in to the Facebook’s coin program could potentially serve as a solution. Some may be wondering why users should be verified by their bank information instead of anything else, like a picture of themselves (Bumble) or the user’s number and email, along with other personal information (Twitter)?
The reason behind this is that Facebook does not gain much from having users verify their phone number, while there’s much to gain if users are to opt-in to their new stablecoin program. They offer the opportunity to drive user behavior through financial disincentives and incentives and make each user an active participant in the Facebook’s network.
By doing so, Facebook creates a new incentive model, where Facebook users are rewarded for being who they are and expressing themselves in their own unique way, paving the way for the ‘new Facebook.’ Here are the four benefits that could come out of Facebook building out this feature.
Firstly, having users opt-in to the stablecoin program could punish users who spam and offer no substance to the marketplace. This could be done by having the user pay 10 cents (or cheaper in developing countries, chosen in context) per post, while those that are voted as spam over 10 times will be verified by our checkers and be punished if proven to be a spam by costing the user $10. If the user does not have $10 in their Facebook wallet, then they will not be able to write any comments and be notified to pay their dues if they want to participate in the marketplace again.
This will lead to three key benefits: firstly, the machine learning system will better capture spam posts by having Facebook users label what a spam post is. Secondly, the spammers will lose the incentive to keep advertising, even if they make multiple accounts, as there is a lot to lose. Facebook could even notify the bank that the user is overdue a payment and affect the credit of that spammer, so that there is a clear consequence of their action.
Lastly, it could make each comment more meaningful, while eliminating the incentive to be a troll online. User generated content struggles with this problem, as seen by Steam’s community groups where hate speech is rampant. By making each comment potentially cost the user if seen as an abuse, it could curb users from behaving in ways that could offend others.
The concerns for this feature will be what to do for those who don’t verify themselves. There could be a few ways to tackle this problem: we could have the comments by non-verified users below all the verified users, we could add a new setting where the comments by verified users are the only ones that generate notifications, or we could make the marketplace only filled with verified users.
The other concern will be whether users would like to even pay the 10 cents to post in the marketplace and what to do about the 1.7 billion users who do not have a bank account. I will hold these concerns for now, as I will touch on how we will address these concerns in my next few points.
Secondly, Facebook could start rewarding users who offer meaningful insights and take a portion of Facebook’s profits. This sharing of profit model is not new — Medium has a partner program, while streaming services all have their own subscription model that benefits the creators. Creators can monetize on Facebook by having videos that show ads, but Facebook videos are only a small portion of Facebook’s experience.
The words that people share, along with pictures and memes that make people want to go back to Facebook are all elements that make Facebook what it is. They are essential for Facebook to know what kind of person you are.
Furthermore, when these parts don’t inspire interesting insights, users fade away towards other social media networks. This is why Facebook should look to reward those who adds value to the Facebook platform as a creator, as they will ensure that each notification the users receive is inspiring and actually means something. This will also make the 10 cents users pay for each post in the marketplace negligible.
Although Facebook may initially lose revenue from this model, it gains credibility and trust in return, along with a better experience that may increase the lifetime value of each user.
Each Facebook user would have their own wallet, which keeps track of all transactions like Brave
This ecosystem can also provide opportunities for Facebook to create a new economy that could issue new bank accounts for those without one. Tracking how people spend their Facebook coins and how they behave on Facebook could serve as data points in evaluating one’s credit.
This behavioral measurement will matter, as abuses from a few have proven to have rippling effects on Facebook. By giving more weight to users’ behavior for those with less financial record, Facebook could expand the pool of people who qualify for a bank account that they never may have otherwise.
This also incentivizes those without bank accounts to engage more with Facebook’s product to initially gain the trust of Facebook. This will increase Facebook’s revenue, which Facebook can use to enlarge the pool of money set aside for this program, mitigating the potential risk of payments not coming on time.
Thirdly, Facebook could give each user badges and achievements that could lead to higher yields for their contributions. Badges could show what the users’ interest is, how much they engage with those interests and how many likes they have accumulated for writing about such interests.
This makes it clear to the advertisers who they are advertising to and why certain users might see specific ads. Moreover, it incentivizes users to engage more with the Facebook product without feeling like they are being snooped, as Facebook is now using the data that the users are aware of about their profile.
On the business side, higher yield can come in the form of a higher cut of the profit that Facebook makes per ad. For example, if normal users engage with a specific ad of their interest, they might get a 10% cut, while ‘influencers’ who have met specific conditions get a 20% cut.
Although Facebook may again initially lose revenue from giving some profit back to the users, what they will get in return are users who are highly interested in engaging with Facebook and no longer feel creeped out by the ads they see.
Facebook could also charge the advertisers extra money if the advertisers wish to show their product to users who are ‘influencers’ of the product’s niche. The advertisers could even set extra incentives to give users more profit if the users share their ads and accumulate more likes, helping the ad become viral.
This makes sense for the advertisers, as viral posts no longer need Facebook’s boosts once it hits a certain threshold. Advertisers are also gaining product evangelists in return, as users have an incentive to make the product they are sharing likable to others in their circle too.
Beyond financial reasons, groups can also become more lively as well, since users will know what kind of users are within each group. Having some sort of familiarity with what others are interested in and getting insight into what people like you are liking and commenting within each page and post could also make the experience feel a lot more personalized.
Users will also be incentivized to write productive material so that their voice could matter more in future discussions, which will be a huge value add to each group. For blockchain enthusiasts, we could call this proof-of-post, where the value add through each post leads to the user gaining more stake within their group.
This feature also allows users to go back and see why they saw each ads. This could serve as a strong incentive for the advertisers, as they are getting users to see their ad again at no cost, while users get to analyze which ads they have seen and why.
Furthermore, the types of badges people have could serve as a good analytics tool for the admin of each group to ensure that they know what the group’s interests are to be inclusive, while focusing on serving what users want/like.
The concern from this feature is that Facebook could become a rampant world where everyone advertises a product, but if they can make it personal and real, as they are the ones that will likely accumulate the most likes, that won’t necessarily be a bad thing. It could open a new system of how ads work and actually end up reaching to those who actually need them.
After all, with the punishment for spam high and the reward for good post also high, the users will be discouraged from trying to abuse this feature. The fact that their real world credit is also on the line depending on how they behave in social media also further deters bad behavior.
The other concern users could have is that this will make the social media a lot more serious, which is certainly not a use case for certain users. However, Facebook could push non-serious materials to the stories, as they are ephemeral and will less affect the Facebook experience as a whole.
Groups could also exist for non-serious purposes, but what qualifies as a quality post will depend on what the group is for. A quality post in a meme group will differ from that in a group made for those who are struggling with an illness and want serious support.
By having each individual share more information about their interests that they feel comfortable sharing, Facebook could improve their group experience and form meaningful communities. The new incentive model could drive individual behaviors that makes Facebook the place to get inspired or receive the help the users need to get through hard times.
Lastly, this gives people a reason to care about Facebook’s new stablecoin. Remember how Facebook’s last attempt at having virtual currencies named Facebook credits didn’t work out as planned? If a clear use case for the product does not exist, then even the most technologically advanced features will not be used.
This could also diversify Facebook’s revenue portfolio, so that they won’t have to rely solely on ads. This would give Facebook more flexibility to experiment and work towards its mission to ‘give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.’ Blockchain technology has come at the best possible time for Facebook, as it provides the tools for Facebook to become a privacy-focused platform as seen from some of the possible features I have listed.
Verifying all users via their bank accounts comes at an assumption that all people will verify their accounts, which may actually not happen. However, the benefits of this feature, if executed right, warrant a look by Facebook executives to at least consider these features. Facebook have made a lot of investments towards regaining users’ trust, but the users want to see the features that show this, not words.
I hope that social media can be used to bring more good than evil to the world. Talks of Facebook being too big with Instagram and Whatsapp will continue to be surfaced, but if they can execute on a privacy-focused platform right, then I don’t see why people would want Facebook to be broken up. Facebook is able to make the ambitious move towards a privacy-focused platform because of its size, so I hope that Facebook would meet its promise and deliver the product that could benefit the whole Facebook community.
Recommendations as Facebook builds a new privacy focused product was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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