That’s actually really interesting, can you go more into it? I think it’s pretty relevant to this moment in history (I don’t know much about FT), it was a pretty big moment, since this AI risk article was allegedly the most viewed article on FT, possibly for the entire day, and I personally remember it being unusually close to the top of the page, and with a very eye-catchy image.
It’s hard to describe in prosaic terms since it was more of an abstract feeling than a literal change in average word count per comment or similar.
Perhaps the best way to put it is that it was the ideal forum culture that many pre-2010s wanted to see come into fruition except focused primarily on finance, without any visible moderation, and with a much higher bar for entry. Or perhaps an intellectual gentleman’s club culture brought online.
This was back when the cheapest annual subscription could have been a mortgage payment for a shabbier townhouse in London.
I couldn’t afford that but still had access because of my university’s arrangements with the then publisher. I only got commenting privileges after vastly cheaper student-only subscriptions were offered as a trial.
So to be fair to the Nikkei, the old culture was already half gone when they took control as the students were inevitably much less sophisticated, including me.
It may sound ridiculous to 2023 readers but approximately 0% of the commentators, even though the very large majority of them were anonymous or pseudo-anonymous, engaged in any of the negative tendencies we now associate with large amounts of online interactions.
Do you think that internal forums or slack channels within large banking corporations, like Goldman Sachs or think tanks or certain gardens at Google, could easily replicate that just by making the barrier to entry very high?
I doubt it because there’s no way they could hide their real names. That degree of separation is critical for a substantial portion of populace to engage, even for the very select population staffing those firms.
That’s actually really interesting, can you go more into it? I think it’s pretty relevant to this moment in history (I don’t know much about FT), it was a pretty big moment, since this AI risk article was allegedly the most viewed article on FT, possibly for the entire day, and I personally remember it being unusually close to the top of the page, and with a very eye-catchy image.
It’s hard to describe in prosaic terms since it was more of an abstract feeling than a literal change in average word count per comment or similar.
Perhaps the best way to put it is that it was the ideal forum culture that many pre-2010s wanted to see come into fruition except focused primarily on finance, without any visible moderation, and with a much higher bar for entry. Or perhaps an intellectual gentleman’s club culture brought online.
This was back when the cheapest annual subscription could have been a mortgage payment for a shabbier townhouse in London.
I couldn’t afford that but still had access because of my university’s arrangements with the then publisher. I only got commenting privileges after vastly cheaper student-only subscriptions were offered as a trial.
So to be fair to the Nikkei, the old culture was already half gone when they took control as the students were inevitably much less sophisticated, including me.
It may sound ridiculous to 2023 readers but approximately 0% of the commentators, even though the very large majority of them were anonymous or pseudo-anonymous, engaged in any of the negative tendencies we now associate with large amounts of online interactions.
Mind = blown
Do you think that internal forums or slack channels within large banking corporations, like Goldman Sachs or think tanks or certain gardens at Google, could easily replicate that just by making the barrier to entry very high?
I doubt it because there’s no way they could hide their real names. That degree of separation is critical for a substantial portion of populace to engage, even for the very select population staffing those firms.