ByteDance is one of the greatest companies in internet history, with recommendation algorithms at its core, which can be said to have led the information distribution of the entire mobile era. To this day, we can hardly see any mainstream information application that does not use algorithms, and it is even difficult to find any mainstream information application that does not make algorithm-driven information streams the default option.
It can be said that almost all efficiency upgrades in information distribution over the past fifteen years cannot bypass recommendation algorithms.
Of course, one important reason for its development is the explosion of mobile technology - this allows independent electronic devices to belong precisely to individuals, becoming an extension of the personal body, or even a part of the body; at the same time, it enables the collection of more and broader user data, providing the possibility for more accurate algorithms.
In the lifecycle of information consumption, distribution is a part that is relatively overlooked in terms of effort required. In fact, good distribution requires as much effort as good creation to achieve good consumption results. This is also a fundamental reason for the success of recommendation algorithms: they can achieve very good distribution results (high relevance to users) with very little human effort (almost none).
Before algorithms, if a user wanted to achieve a good distribution result, they usually had to rely on a few specialized editorial teams, selecting the one that best suited their preferences and hoping they would consistently make good judgments; we can temporarily call this editor-based distribution.
Or they had to rely on their own manual effort, actively searching for and filtering good information and content - being their own editor. We can temporarily call this self-based distribution.
In the above illustration, the red thick line represents the distribution process that requires effort, and the object linked at the lower end of the red thick line is the object of effort.
Among them, editor-based distribution accounts for the vast majority in terms of user coverage and usage. The reason is simple - the return from doing the effort oneself is merely more "information that aligns with one's preferences and efficiency," while the amount of effort expended is very large.
Under this premise, when recommendation algorithms appeared, it was a devastating blow to both of the above models - all human participants in the entire system could achieve better information distribution results with very little effort.
As a result, algorithm-based information distribution now almost controls the entire internet. Meanwhile, this distribution method has also brought many drawbacks - issues such as reinforcing biases, information cocoons, clickbait content, and excessive pursuit of traffic have been topics of discussion among practitioners and users - there are even many voices lamenting "the world has long suffered from algorithms."
As a group, users will always seek to achieve the best results (goods, experiences, etc.) with less effort and cost (financial, cognitive, action, etc.), so even if people have grievances about algorithms, they continue to consume the world - only a small portion of users still rely on editors or their own efforts to obtain information.
Our focus here is on the latter, that is, users who still maintain the habit of searching for and organizing information today - they will still actively search, subscribe, unfollow, filter, and so on, while maintaining their requirements for the quality and accuracy of information acquisition. Their number is certainly small compared to the audience of algorithms, but if we look at their absolute number, it is still quite considerable (e.g., the global user base of a single RSS client exceeds 20 million).
This leads me to ponder, if distribution itself is a form of effort, and there has always been a significant group of users who have been putting in effort for their information experience, can we treat their effort as a result for other users to consume?
If content creation is a form of effort that can be monetized, can information distribution also be a form of effort that can be monetized? This way, many efforts that originally could not be assetized in any form could be better incentivized, and the entire distribution system would become unprecedentedly decentralized. Of course, the decentralization here refers to social rather than technical aspects (for more on technical decentralization, refer to https://rss3.io/).
From the simplest mechanism perspective, if a person has a specific subscription list and continuously maintains it to best serve themselves and a small group of similar people, would they be willing to share it in exchange for some social recognition? If ordinary users can easily consume these information streams that are being organized and updated in real-time, would they gain more value than the existing distribution systems?
For ordinary users, this provides a path to obtain a good distribution experience without effort, just like editors and algorithms do. At the same time, it avoids the low selectivity brought by editors and the high echo chambers created by algorithms.
For users who are already organizing information, their efforts can not only improve their information acquisition efficiency but also turn the results of their efforts into a form of social asset, economic asset, or even a monetizable channel to gain profits.
Individual effort-makers and their users can create an organic connection - instead of simply letting algorithms observe your behavior to gradually adjust parameters, you can interact with real people to make suggestions, or even become an effort-maker yourself, helping more people in the process of improving your information acquisition and earning rewards.
Of course, in actual products, we still need to solve some cold start problems. For example, if the effort in information distribution is a commodity, there must be enough "sellers" and "buyers" in this market. In such a bilateral market, how to let "sellers" join as "buyers," understand this system, and better serve themselves and others is key.
If Pinduoduo has changed the link between "people and goods" to some extent through "people to people," can we propose a possibility to further change the link between "people and information" through "people to people"?
So can we introduce decentralized technology, and together with this decentralized distribution system, try to solve the capitalization and monetization of distribution while further increasing the health, efficiency, and sustainability of information dissemination?
Of course, building such a system relies on two other core factors: one is to have a sufficiently large open information repository in the era of information monopoly; the other is to provide a truly good end-user experience.
If algorithms represent centralized efficiency brought by machine evolution, then this new socialized distribution method may be a possibility for human society, as a living organic entity, to counteract it.