A “social contract” that one party changes at will and then just announces the changes is not a contract (or social) in any meaningful sense. It’s just terms and conditions with a different name.
If you want people to see it as a different thing, it needs to be a different thing.
While I understand what you're saying, what's the alternative? For an early platform to come out and say, "this is exactly how we're going to operate until the end of time and if we change our minds we'll... dissolve ourselves?"
IMO The Social Contract that we publish is a step in the right direction. If you're on IG and you look at your feed in 2018 vs 2026, you can tell that something has changed dramatically but there is nothing in writing about what IG promised in 2018 vs what they do in 2026. It's all by feel. If they published it, IG users would be able to point out every promise kept and broken.
In the future, perhaps members can sign contracts like sports stars who agree with their club to have ABC terms for XYZ years. But this is where we're starting and I'm happy to get feedback from our members on how to better assure them in future versions of The Social Contract.
I agree, but since you will have to change it, I'm just saying it's not a contract if it changes from one side.
So, e.g.:
- make it more quasi-contractually binding on yourself, in some principled, innovative way: establish a member user group, consult with them before changing it and give them the freedom to publish the minutes of the meeting, or establish some other meaningful cost of changing it
- or just call it "What we mean when we say 'social network'" or something, otherwise it's about as good as "Don't Be Evil".
> Myspace is a favela. You've ever been to a Brazilian favela? It basically, politically, represents the structure of Myspace. You've got this remote, distant, old-school Brazilian tyrant. Anti-democratic, wicked mogul, pays no attention to you, supposedly owns the whole show, but the whole shebang is going south in a hurry.
> You have no civil rights in Myspace. You can't go anywhere in Myspace, you can't organize in Myspace, you can't make money in Myspace.
> You can have a hut in Myspace. And you live in the hut until they pull the plug. That's a favela. It's made of instructables. A favela is an emergent structure, it's made out of corrugated tin and breeze blocks.
> You can't insure it, you can't get title to it, you can't raise kids in it. There's no inspection of the water, the heating, the electricity. It's a slum!
> You built it yourself, with play-labor, but politically it's a slum.
— Bruce Sterling