Quora’s first-ever acquisition is discussion platform Parlio
Quora’s first-ever acquisition is discussion platform Parlio Quora’s first-ever acquisition is discussion platform Parlio read the article on The Next Web http://gizmorati.com/2016/03/31/quoras-first-ever-acquisition-is-discussion-platform-parlio/
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Ce blogueur égyptien, acteur-clé de la révolution qui a renversé Moubarak en 2011, lance aux Etats-Unis la plateforme Parlio, destinée à «civiliser» les débats publics en ligne. Ambitieux !
Research into WeChat censorship and Chinese online rumors
The power of online rumors extends far beyond their contents. Even when they are not specifically aimed at rallying masses to a cause, the transmission of even the most dubious of claims is still indicative of another kind of collective movement: an attack on the pervasive censorship system, which has encouraged online users to develop an extreme form of skepticism wherein, as Hu Yong, a professor at Peking University's School of Journalism and Communication, suggests, "news looks like rumor and rumor looks like news." In such an environment, the spread of rumors on the Chinese Internet is not surprising—and considering their implicit criticism of the credibility of authorities, neither is the effort by government officials and social media companies to restrict them.
—”China’s Rumor Mill: Why Beijing Is Cracking Down on ‘Unverified’ Information Online,” Foreign Affairs
The above is from an article I wrote last month in Foreign Affairs based on my research into what kind of posts are censored on the public accounts platform of WeChat, a mobile app that is incredibly popular in China right now. Among my conclusions (you can read the full report, “Politics, Rumors, and Ambiguity: Tracking Censorship on WeChat’s Public Accounts Platform” on the Citizen Lab blog) are:
Sensitive keywords are found in a greater percentage of censored posts than normal (uncensored) posts.
The data contains evidence of automatic review filters preventing posts with certain blacklisted keywords from being published. Examples include 六四 (June 4), 太子党 (princeling), and keywords relating to Falun Gong.
An analysis of 150 censored posts reveals that rumors, speculation, and political commentary were also being censored. Censored content included posts which contained outright falsehoods, tabloid gossip, and sensationalism—a number of which appear fairly harmless. This may be a reflection of the ongoing “anti-rumor campaign” sweeping Chinese social media.
The report discusses the collective power of rumors and ambiguity in censorship, issues raised by how WeChat controls information on its public accounts platform.
The last two points are the focus of the Foreign Affairs article. In conjunction with the article, I had a brief discussion with Emily Parker on the new social media site Parlio. It’s been fascinating studying how people use WeChat’s public accounts/blogging platform, and I look forward to tracking all this going forward.
#Parlio is an unfinished, altruistic social network with a lot of evolutionary changes in the pipeline, It is designed with civil insightful troll-free conversations in mind.
Parlio claims to be open-minded and diversified albeit nothing yet can prove these claims; apart from the site definition and founders perspectives.
Membership is still by invitation and most users can only read content, up-vote a topic or a comment. It is unclear - yet promised- how regular readers turn into full members or who can contribute to the site.
Parlio has a lot of challenges and many questions to answer in the road to success. I will try to bring some here ; hopefully a civil insightful perspective.
Parlio aims at sharing opinions and experiences that strengthen the community’s collective intelligence, However Parlio gives the microphone to the elite while the audience is totally muted, It is not a discussion and there are no opinions, it is an amplification of the already loud voices, an empowering of the powerful, meanwhile stripping the whole community of every tool it can use to give a meaningful feedback.
Social networks and the internet at large have been very powerful in creating new celebrities that enriched the general dialogue and added much fresh blood and ideology, Wael Ghonim - one of the founders- is a great example and many of the site selected elite are, However Parlio is doing the exact opposite and shutting down the road to this “elitism”, and hence to diversity.
What makes Parlio different ?
Is it giving the elite a voice, one can easily argue that there is no short of tools, they have verified accounts with thousands and sometimes millions of followers and an already established fanfare.
Is it the heavily moderated nature of the platform. Well; a moderated platform is the best place for all kinds of bias, starting from selection bias to whatever you think of.
Is it the design of the discussion threads which is very similar to a rated forum threads, and voted up like the deceased Digg and the struggling Reddit.
Is it the the content, the finely curated discussion topics, by an elite of speakers. let’s see if this will be a factor for success or not.
Last but not least, Parlio is enforcing the status quo, and in no way it will give a hand to challenging the status quo, a bio millions have read about the founder Wael Ghonim.
Since Parlio is an unfinished product in transition and subject to lots of changes, I understand that the current application could be very far from the final product, a fact that stimulated me to write this, hoping that it might reach the founders as a voice from outside.