On Social Media and Feudalism
I am lucky enough to have a friend like Richard Piacentini acting as my supporter on LinkedIn. Because of him, a few of my followers there were able to know that I was blocked from logging in for about five or six hours on Wednesday.
By the LinkedIn automated systems.
For an inappropriate comment.
That wasn’t inappropriate.
Most of them didn’t notice, and there is more on that further down in the article.
So what did you say?
Let’s use an image:
That’s right, I posted some code solving a problem asked by John Rigler in this post. For those of you not au fait with JavaScript, it’s part of a program that you can find at this repository and which allows you to:
- Generate a Bitcoin address from a private key,
- Sign the Bitcoin address with the private key using the elliptic curve digital signing algorithm,
- Extract the public key from the signature, and
- Check that the public key derives the same Bitcoin address.
Basic cryptographic computer stuff. Hardly the most subversive of actions, I’ll think you’ll agree.
Update: after a second blocking, it turns out I am not allowed to use the word starting with B that describes what Satoshi Nakamoto invented in a comment, or the LinkedIn community policy watchdog algorithm automatically bans me from the platform. I’m leaving the JavaScript stuff up there in this article because … I think it’s an interesting side-topic.
How did you feel?
Kind of stunned, to be honest, and slightly sick.
I’ve put an awful lot of hours into writing posts, comments, and articles on LinkedIn. Over a hundred so far, and I also post almost daily, which has resulted in a lot of material building up over the years.
A shocking amount, now that I think about it. I really should take some time to download it and organize it into … something.
I know some people out there think I’m amazingly selfless and altruistic for spending my time explaining blockchain concepts to the masses, engaging in debates where we all learn a bit more, and throwing in some humor to liven things up a bit. Which is a big part of it, to be fair.
However, there is another reason that I put all that effort into social media:
Finding work through the reach it gives me.
For the last five or six years this social media effort has paid off — almost every contract and consultancy gig I’ve landed is due to people reaching out to me on LinkedIn or Youtube. It’s the best form of inbound marketing I know of. Better than the books I’ve written.
To be permanently blocked by one of those platforms would result in a severe hit on my income. My family and I live in a country where I know we’re not going to be homeless and hungry, but it would be a radical change in our lives.
The feeling I had when the block hit me reminded me of how I felt when Qualcomm unexpectedly laid off everyone in my office back in 2015.
And that makes me think — do I really want to tie my future prosperity to a social media platform? Have I just hitched myself to a different kind of cart?
But enough about me and my privileged first-world worries.
What’s the blocking process?
A bit strange, to be honest. Fortunately I took screenshots. I posted the comment, clicked on my feed, and found myself logged out.
On trying to log in, I got the following message:
No warning, no “do you really want to post that comment”, just … no more logging in.
And hence, no posting, no direct messaging, no commenting, and no seeing what my favorite content providers here produced today.
Did you appeal?
Of course! I’m impetuous, and so I wasn’t going to wait 48 hours. And so I found out that it was my most recent comment that got me banned; the one with the JavaScript blockchain code, and not some other earlier comment or post that I made.
The automated comment reviewing software decided that the code comprised illegal and regulated goods and services.
One piece of advice I got when I shared my predicament with people I can communicate with outside of LinkedIn was that I should provide code on a more code-friendly platform like Github instead. It’s still a platform owned by Microsoft.
I reviewed the community policy, determined that my comment should be fine, checked all the boxes, and clicked submit. By the way, LinkedIn, if you don’t want people to share computer code in comments or use particular words, you should add that to your community policy. Provide a list, so we know in advance what you don’t want us to talk about.
The interesting thing is that my account was still visible to everyone else on LinkedIn. I couldn’t see or use it, but the rest of the world could.
In a small way it felt like being digitally “disappeared”, but with a facsimile of my virtual self still remaining behind so no one could know that I was absent. That was the most disturbing thing about the whole experience to me.
What have you learned?
The main thing is that you should not have all your eggs in one social media basket.
I do have a Youtube channel that is performing reasonably, and this Medium account that seems to have become more successful over time despite the little attention I pay to it. I just copy/paste my articles from LinkedIn over to here. Perhaps I should change that.
But then again, I have spent most of my time on LinkedIn. I like the atmosphere, the people I interact with, and even though the commenting threading sucks, the discussions are better here. Not perfect, but better.
The other observations are less obvious.
Social media has changed
Back in the 2000s, social media was just a bit of fun. Before then, I used to keep a journal on my own website under my control, subsequently moved to Livejournal for the convenience and cost savings, then Facebook for the early party, and finally LinkedIn because everyone in the office said that it was the place for “professionals”, whatever they are.
Social media was not that valuable to me in those days.
I just came for the view. Then things changed, and now … I’m locked in.
I can’t leave Facebook unless I want to say goodbye to twenty or so people from my youth that I’ve reconnected with over there. Yes, it is possible to continue those relationships offline or by email, but we all know that most of the attention is on those notification icons.
If I quit Facebook the natural order of things is that we’ll all drift apart again.
I can’t leave LinkedIn. The amount of time and effort I have put into it means that my account has become extremely valuable. It is a bit like being in a successful signed band — you can quit the record company, but don’t expect to be releasing any more popular albums any time soon.
We are in a techno-feudalistic world
All these platforms look like they’re free, open and modern, but they’re a step back to a bygone era. The landlords and barons have taken control of this new digital land, and we get to farm it and make a reasonable living at their behest.
And they get to make substantial profits off us in the process. It is a new form of feudalism, where your rights depend on where you stand in the hierarchy.
There is an appeal process equivalent to petitioning the king in the event of an injustice, but like a peasant who cannot afford to go without food until the sovereign eventually (if ever) gets around to considering the petition, an arbitration or court case sometime in a year or so does not solve your immediate problem of losing your communication and marketing channel.
In many way it has parallels with PayPal arbitrarily freezing a start-up’s funds. Social media influence and reach is only one step removed from money (once you work out how to use it — and it’s not easy).
The tyranny of the algorithm
And so, like a character in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie Brazil, we may find that a simple algorithmic error beyond our control undoes years of work and jeopardizes our futures.
It is ironic that my first LinkedIn block ever should occur less than a month after receiving a Top Voice badge from them.
I was lucky. The error was corrected fairly quickly, and although I like to think I have enough connections and friends to put some kind of public relations pressure on the platform management to reinstate me, there are no guarantees.
Of course it is even worse if you feel compelled to speak about something that a platform disagrees with. That takes us into a deeper and more complicated territory, and deserves its own article. One not written by me — the complexities of balancing free speech with a functioning society go back centuries, and I am no John Locke or Voltaire.
What should LinkedIn do?
My immediate conclusion is that LinkedIn should make the text they present you with clearer and less impersonal. Something like, “This restriction may have occurred in error, so do not panic — a person will be reviewing your case very soon and fixing it if the community policy enforcement algorithm made a mistake” would have helped.
When I was at university, there were three clearly defined penalties for misbehavior — fines, being “rusticated” (suspended from the university for a period of time, usually a term), or “sent down” (expelled permanently).
What happened to me on LinkedIn was that my account was “restricted” — I couldn’t log in, but everything else remained the same. I think you can also have your account blocked and put into archive from which it can be restored, or even permanently deleted.
In the shock of the moment, it is easy to confuse a minor temporary penalty for something more serious. When a university punishes an undergraduate the student is facing a human being, who can judge whether this is having a overly upsetting effect and subsequently offer them counselling.
When LinkedIn restricts or blocks your account, there is no one for you to talk to, or to ensure you have understood your situation properly. That is a public relations disaster in the making — at some point, someone out there is going to do something extreme and irreversible in the mistaken belief that their cherished account has been expunged.
Where to next?
I am still taking my time to deliberate, cogitate and digest the whole affair.
Let’s face it, this is nothing as severe as surviving a plane crash in the Andes, and everything turned out alright, but like any visceral experience it has been thought-provoking.
I know some people who read what I have written are going to be exclaiming, “Move to a decentralized platform!” or “Host your own LinkedIn-like blogging platform!”
And I could do either, or even both. I’m lucky enough to understand how to do so with relative ease.
But there are other things at play here, because neither of those suggestions solve my current problem, or the deeper issues surrounding social media, censorship, and the concept of audience that this has driven to the forefront of my mind. More on that in a future article or video.
In other words — thanks for blocking me, LinkedIn! It has really made me think.
Oh, and thanks for unblocking me, LinkedIn. Because now I can continue to heat my home and feed my kids.
About the author
I’m Keir Finlow-Bates, often known as Blockchain Gandalf, and am primarily a blockchain researcher and inventor. I started out on this journey in late 2010 by examining the original Bitcoin code, and have been obsessed with blockchain ever since.
I am also the author of two books on the topic:
Move Over Brokers Here Comes The Blockchain, which explains blockchain concepts from both a technical and social perspective in an amusing and understandable manner using analogies, and
Evil Tokenomics, which illustrates the various techniques scammers use to launch and promote token projects whose sole aim is to part you from your hard-earned cash.
You can find more at my website: https://thinklair.com
