Openness and Its Discontents

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-76
Author(s):  
Kieron O’Hara
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Net Neutrality ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Hard Cases

Although openness has many good arguments for it, it has led to a string of hard cases, including data protection and privacy, copyright, censorship, the externalities of social networks, and net neutrality. Openness brings three problematic effects: it is hard to keep out bad actors without centralized gatekeeping; openness does not ensure representativeness or diversity; collective action problems, such as free-riding, can occur. Some technologies enable the efficiencies of openness to be reproduced in systems that are not open, and governments have a number of levers they can pull to restrict Internet freedoms. Some governments even dream of total sovereignty over the Internet. There are various specific complaints about openness, including the need to treat different media differently, the problems of bad faith at scale, a large threat surface, and bias.

How Should Responsibility for Regulation Be Allocated?

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-234
Author(s):  
Kevin E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Development Bank ◽  
Or Efficiency ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Enforcement Authority ◽  
Hard Cases

The OECD paradigm’s expansive approach to jurisdiction has advantages in terms of effectiveness and legitimacy, but, by inviting multiple enforcement agencies to intervene in individual cases, it creates space for disagreement, conflict, and redundancy. Previous chapters have shown that reasonable people can disagree about which conduct or actors to target and what sanctions to impose. There also is a risk that collective action problems will compromise effectiveness or efficiency. Some of these dangers can be avoided by assigning enforcement authority to an international organization such as a multilateral development bank, or even a new international anti-corruption agency, but the problems of legitimacy are likely to remain. When hard cases arise, the views of people who will be most greatly affected by the decision, namely, the inhabitants of the country governed by corrupt officials, ought to be given significant weight.

scholarly journals An open code pledge for the neuroscience community

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cooper Smout ◽  
Dawn Liu Holford ◽  
Kelly Garner ◽  
ruddy manuel illanes beyuma ◽  
Paula Andrea Martinez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Research Community ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Community Project ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Neuroscience Community

Sharing of research code would greatly benefit neuroscience, but this practice is hampered by a collective action problem. Since the development of the internet, conditional pledge platforms (e.g., Kickstarter) have increasingly been used to solve globally-dispersed collective action problems (Hallam, 2016). However, this strategy has yet to be implemented within academia. In this brief paper, we introduce a general purpose conditional pledge platform for the research community: Project Free Our Knowledge. We highlight a new conditional pledge campaign that was initiated at Brainhack 2021 and aims to motivate a critical mass of neuroscientists to share their research code. Crucially, this commitment activates only when a user-defined threshold of support is reached. We conclude by sharing our vision for how the research community could use collective action campaigns to create a sustained, evidence-based movement for social change in academia.

scholarly journals How chimpanzees solve collective action problems

2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1749) ◽  
pp. 4946-4954 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Claire Schneider ◽  
Alicia P. Melis ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Social Tolerance ◽  
Significant Variability ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
The Individual

We presented small groups of chimpanzees with two collective action situations, in which action was necessary for reward but there was a disincentive for individuals to act owing to the possibility of free-riding on the efforts of others. We found that in simpler scenarios (experiment 1) in which group size was small, there was a positive relationship between rank and action with more dominant individuals volunteering to act more often, particularly when the reward was less dispersed. Social tolerance also seemed to mediate action whereby higher tolerance levels within a group resulted in individuals of lower ranks sometimes acting and appropriating more of the reward. In more complex scenarios, when group size was larger and cooperation was necessary (experiment 2), overcoming the problem was more challenging. There was highly significant variability in the action rates of different individuals as well as between dyads, suggesting success was more greatly influenced by the individual personalities and personal relationships present in the group.

The limits to bridging social capital: Power, social context and the theory of Robert Putnam

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 1309-1324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derik Gelderblom
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Robert Putnam ◽  
Bridging Social Capital ◽  
Cooperation And Competition ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Definition Of

Although there is general agreement on the definition of social capital as the benefits to be derived from social connections, the type of advantages (more effective transacting across all fields versus contacts for personal advantage) and the beneficiaries (community versus individual) identified by social capital scholars differ. This variety can be addressed with a distinction between the so-called schools of cooperation and competition. This article focuses on the former, particularly the work of Robert Putnam. The author uses Nicos Mouzelis’s critique of rational choice theory, and his distinction between micro and macro actors, as a diagnostic tool to highlight the shortcomings of Putnam’s work and the cooperation school more generally. The author argues that Putnam’s notion of bridging social capital as a solution to problems of intolerance and more general social ills is overblown, given that both diverse social networks and increasing tolerance are the result of deeper social processes not analysed by Putnam. In support of this, the article lists a number of ways in which macro actors influence the ability of social networks to form, and once formed, constrain and enable their agency in either a cooperative or competitive direction. It also criticises the tendency of cooperation theorists to generalise the solution of the collective action problem on the micro level to the macro level. Finally, the article emphasises the importance of analysing the interaction between different collective action problems, as well as the connection between cooperation and competition.

scholarly journals Collective Action Problems and Direct Democracy: An Analysis of Georgia’s 2010 Trauma Care Funding Amendment

Economies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Joshua C. Hall ◽  
Jeremy Horpedahl ◽  
E. Frank Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Trauma Care ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Motor Vehicle ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Rent Seeking ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Trauma Centers ◽  
Collective Action Problems

In 2010, Georgians voted on a proposed constitutional amendment that would have increased motor vehicle licensing fees by USD 10 with the proceeds dedicated to maintaining and expanding the state’s trauma care centers. This paper examines voter support for the referendum across counties and finds (1) that counties located near trauma centers in neighboring states had significantly lower support for the amendment and (2) that counties already having trauma centers had higher support for the amendment. These results are, respectively, consistent with free-riding and rent-seeking on the part of voters.

Collective-Action Problems and Institutional Systems

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-42
Author(s):  
William D. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Second Order ◽  
First Order ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Structured Groups ◽  
Social Orders

A society’s prospects for development depend on its ability to resolve collective-action problems (CAPs). Resolution depends on underlying institutional contexts. Inequality permeates these interactions. This chapter introduces CAPs, institutions, institutional systems, social orders, and political settlements. CAPs arise when individuals, pursuing their own goals, generate undesirable outcomes for some group. First-order CAPs concern forms of free riding; second-order CAPs concern orchestrating the coordination and enforcement that render agreements to limit free riding credible. Discussion proceeds to distinguish informal and formal institutions (norms and rules) from organizations (structured groups of individuals that can take action). Institutional systems are complementary mixes of institutions and organizations, where the latter play critical roles in resolving second-order CAPs. Social orders are large-scale institutional systems. Political settlements are mutual understandings that limit organized violence by addressing broad allocations of authority and benefits.

The Internet Trap

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Hindman
Keyword(s):  
The Internet ◽  
Net Neutrality ◽  
The Public ◽  
Attention Economy ◽  
Digital News ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Over Time

The Internet was supposed to fragment audiences and make media monopolies impossible. Instead, behemoths like Google and Facebook now dominate the time we spend online—and grab all the profits from the attention economy. This book explains how this happened. It sheds light on the stunning rise of the digital giants and the online struggles of nearly everyone else—and reveals what small players can do to survive in a game that is rigged against them. The book shows how seemingly tiny advantages in attracting users can snowball over time. The Internet has not reduced the cost of reaching audiences—it has merely shifted who pays and how. Challenging some of the most enduring myths of digital life, the book explains why the Internet is not the postindustrial technology that has been sold to the public, how it has become mathematically impossible for grad students in a garage to beat Google, and why net neutrality alone is no guarantee of an open Internet. It also explains why the challenges for local digital news outlets and other small players are worse than they appear and demonstrates what it really takes to grow a digital audience and stay alive in today's online economy. The book shows why, even on the Internet, there is still no such thing as a free audience.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document