Social Internet services as tools for creating social media
In October 2011, our Internet service of gratuitous donations DARA-DARE was invited to participate in the VIII International Scientific and Practical Interdisciplinary Symposium Reflexive processes and management conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The key word in which we found an intersection with a purely philosophical problem was the word "environment", or to be more precise, the concept of "social environment" . We have long since introduced this word into the everyday language of our development team in order to better understand what we do, to clarify the methodology and priorities of our development, as well as to designate the place of the service we are developing in the complex space of modern Internet startups.
Preparation for the philosophical conference provoked us to finally shape our thoughts into a text that now I want to give to the attention of the IT community. It seems to us that the concepts we have formulated can be useful to all those who develop social Internet services or who think of themselves as a social entrepreneur . In this text, using the concept of “social environment” using the example of the Internet donation service, an attempt is made to highlight a certain type of social Internet services and look at them in the broad context of human society as such, its structure and transformation possibilities .
The gift-dar is an international community in which people give each other their belongings and services free of charge and free of charge, without demanding anything in return. The mission of the community is to work together to learn how to give and receive as a gift and transfer this skill to the rest of the world. The community is guided by the traditions of Dar-dara and interacts with the help of the donation service, the site darudar.org .
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The project was launched in late 2008 by a group of enthusiasts in the form of the internet service darudar.org. During the three years of the project’s existence, it has been joined by more than 100 thousand people from hundreds of cities (from Moscow - about 30 thousand), while it should be noted that most of the people joined the community thanks to an invitation received from their friends. The main countries participating in gratuitous donations at the moment are Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan. More than 2,000 items and services are donated daily. The most different and sometimes unexpected things are given: starting with books, clothes, mobile phones and ending with the services of an interpreter, computer repair and even a car.
The process of giving is as follows. The donor publishes information about his gift and his location. Those who need a thing are noted in those who want a gift, explaining why they need this thing at the moment. After that, the donor analyzes the descriptions of wishes and profiles of those who wish, and chooses the one to whom, in his personal opinion, the giving thing is most useful, then he agrees about this meeting with the person and gives him his gift. For the gift of a gift, it is customary to write public gratitude in order to certify to those around you that the gift actually happened and benefited the gift. The process of giving is governed by a code of conduct (called the “Dar-dara traditions”) adopted in the community. So, among other things, the code says, for example, that it is considered a shame to ask for or offer something in exchange, or it also says that it is considered wrong to appeal to the pity of the donor, putting him in a situation where he would be uncomfortable with his gift not to promise etc.
At Dar-dar, it was possible to create all the necessary conditions so that thousands of people would be happy to give each other their belongings, as it was possible before, only in a circle of very close people. In a different way, it can be said that a special social environment of donation was created, which is characterized by the fact that it was there that turned out to be possible in a multitude of actions of gratuitous donation to strangers. The main issues that would be interesting to highlight with the example of Dara-Dara in this article are how this social environment of giving is arranged, what elements it is made up of, how it is supported, how it develops, how it is connected with other social environments, what effect it has on each person individually and to society as a whole, as well as what reflexive processes in this environment proceed, how they are created and stimulated.
First of all, under the social environment, we understand a set of certain conditions that increase the likelihood of certain events in human society . For example, the popularity of businesses of a certain orientation is often not only a consequence of the economic conditionality of a given territory, but also a consequence of the impact of the social environment in which the people creating these businesses exist. Under the reflexive processes of the social environment, we understand those processes by which the existing environment changes, develops, improves, interacts with other environments . For example, the adoption of some laws and the abolition of others in a given area of ​​society’s life is an example of the reflection of a particular environment and how it changes, as well as how this environment interacts with other environments. With the help of what is created the social environment of gratuitous donation and from what key elements is it composed?
To begin with, Gift-Dar introduces its language into collective use. The key word in this language is the word "gift", embedded in the name of the project itself. Previously, this word denoted events peculiar to the subjects, exceeding in scale of their activities the scale of an ordinary person. So, one could say “the gift of God”, or “the gift of nature”, or “the gift of the state”, etc. In the language of Daru-dara, the word "gift" was associated with daily activities, commensurate with the average person. This word began to be called all those things that each person can share with others without any damage to himself, without making a victim out of this, without remaining at a loss.
With the help of this word, some previously hidden reality was revealed, accessible to everyone, if desired. If you can put the above meaning into the word “gift”, you will be able to give everything that is associated with this word. The word “gift” provoked the appearance of other words derived from it, forming a special language: the donor, who wishes, the gift, to offer as a gift, to wish for a gift, to thank, thank you, etc.
On the other hand, the word “gift” was opposed in everyday language to the word “gift”, which is associated, above all, with acts of giving on a specific occasion or occasion. The gift implies that it is not necessary to have a reason for the act of giving, it is enough to realize that you have something to share with others, and you still need your desire to do a good and kind act.
Dara-Dar's language, which thousands of people are beginning to use, creates in the collective consciousness a space for awareness of the possibility of giving and personal participation in it. Without such a language, such an awareness would be more difficult to achieve. Indeed, it is one thing when you personally come to realize the possibility of disinterested acts, and it is quite another when you understand that in the language used by many, this awareness also exists, which means that your possible behavior has already been approved by others.
Dar-dar as a service offers a specific scenario to be followed in order to give something as a gift. Simplified, this scenario consists of the following steps:
And in society, a collective sense of reality and the naturalness of giving is formed, which is perceived as a given, as correctness, and not as an exception to the rules. People begin to trust each other much more, their fear of uncertainty and insecurity before the world decreases, it is easier for them to find a common language and mutual understanding, to help and support each other, it is easier to participate in joint affairs.
In itself, the long-term existence of the project Daru-dar serves the entire society as a vivid example of the fact that things and services between people can move not only on the principle of exchange, but also on the principle of donation. Such a living example creates in the collective consciousness another, alternative, possibility of human interaction, which was previously, if it was realized, only theoretically (the theory of communism), or was conceived not on such a large scale (within narrow circles of acquaintances and friends), or had a slightly different semantic dimension (in the form of charity, for example).
At a minimum, this visual opportunity should contribute to an increase in the number of daily gratuitous actions produced by people who know about the gift and therefore are aware of the reality and likelihood of similar relationships between people. As a maximum, the practice proved by the possibility of the existence of such a project as Duru-dar creates in the collective imagination space the reality of completely different projects, which are also built from the premise of interaction and cooperation of people on a gratuitous or thankful basis.
For example, it seems increasingly likely the emergence of projects based on the social practice of appreciation payments. When many products are provided free of charge, and a person is free to pay them on the basis of “pay what you want”, i.e. based on how these products or services really benefitted him, as well as on the possibilities of his personal budget. As soon as the density of the donation environment reaches a certain critical point, the emergence of such products will become a very likely reality.
With the help of the Internet service darudar.org thousands of people began to interact, unfamiliar with each other in their daily lives. Regular interaction built around shared gift-sharing scenarios has led to the formation of an online donor community . The online community of donors , as well as the Internet service through which this community interacts, generate an environment of gratuitous donations . In order to understand how this environment is maintained, it would be right to consider how the community is organized, which is the direct carrier and distributor of the new social environment.
The principle of maximum transparency is put in the basis of the relationship on the gift house. Every act of a person in the system is recorded in his profile: anyone can see what you gave, to whom and why, what you yourself received as a gift, how you formulated your need, how you wrote thanks for the received gifts. Such transparency makes it difficult to abuse the trust of donors: it is impossible only to receive a gift, and don’t give anything to yourself, or to receive a gift of many similar things, if you have already actually satisfied your immediate need, or to receive something as a gift. then sell it on another resource. Attempts of this kind immediately become obvious to everyone else, and they simply cease to deal with you.
On the other hand, the transparency of the profile allows a person not to forget what he did in the community, what benefits have already brought. This creates a personal story of each participant, the story of his involvement with the donation community. Each time, returning to the community and looking at his profile, a person remembers what he has already done and sees what he can still do. A community exists only to the extent that community members regularly reproduce the activities around which the community itself has been formed. Most people do this kind of activity when they see how others do it, when they repeat after someone. The transparent profile allows you to see how others act, what they do, and repeat after them, provoking a repetition in the future by other people.
Another important principle laid down in the gift-dar is the principle of self-organization . The service has designed the tools by which community members themselves solve most of the problems that are inevitable in any large community of people. For example, in the publication of each gift there is a button “This is not a gift”, which everyone can click on. When you dial a certain number of votes, the publication automatically disappears from public access and does not count as a gift to the donor. And next to each comment is a button “This is an unworthy comment”, which is also available to every user. If a person writes comments that contradict the Code of Conduct adopted on the site, and they are considered unworthy, he is deprived of the right to write comments, and everyone sees it.
Such a system allows you to distribute the burden of managing the community among the maximum number of people and thus minimize the costs of administering the system. The unworthy behavior of people is not punished by the abstract authority of the administration, but is disapproved of the collective opinion of the whole community, which is a thousand times more effective for understanding the inadmissibility of certain actions. Possessing all the necessary set of self-organizing tools, each project participant understands that maintaining his own positive atmosphere within the community depends on his personal efforts.
The gift-dare by its existence proves a simple truth: in order for some process — be it a general modernization or universal gift — to develop successfully, you just need to give people maximum freedom, but at the same time creating for them all the necessary infrastructure of interaction with each other. When people realize that their personal efforts envy a lot, they are actively involved and begin to spawn processes, self-improving the inherent flaws and shortcomings of any system. The environment itself begins to generate activities that were not originally laid when designing the system.
Thus, at the time of the gift, voluntary postmen appeared in their time — accomplices who themselves took upon themselves the task: to simplify the transfer of gifts between cities. These postmen collect gifts from different users and form one common package from which they themselves go to the post office and go through all the obstacles of an inefficiently functioning state postal system, saving time, money and nerves of other people. Another type of activity, self-generated inside the Dara-dara, is associated with the role of rangers. The rangers are accomplices who voluntarily commit themselves to helping everyone abide by both the formal and informal traditions of the community. Supervisors seek to understand everything that happens in the donor community, each time answering the question of how to relate to a problem or situation, how to act in one way or another, and share the accumulated personal experience with other accomplices. There are accomplices who are actively involved in the discussion of how to improve the service, what functions to add in it, and what to change to make it easier and more pleasant to give. There are accomplices who help newcomers to become familiar with the traditions of the Dara-dar, as well as with informally established norms of behavior and customs.
At one time, in all major cities, with a large number of participants, such a form of activity as General Donation Meetings was born. People agreed on a regular basis, every week, to meet everyone at the same time in order to distribute all their gifts promised during the week. This allowed each participant, instead of many separate meetings related to both the transfer and the receipt of the gift, to attend only one large general meeting in order to cross at the same time with all of their donations and donors. It is obvious that in this way a lot of personal time is saved and the probability of not meeting with the agreed person is reduced.
The code itself, focusing on which the donor community interacts, is not created in the form of clear and unambiguous rules that cannot be broken, but in the form of general principles that everyone should strive for. This allows the community to independently, through collective efforts, give a specific meaning to the norms of behavior adopted in the community. For example, in the code there is a clause regarding how not to express your desire for a gift: “Do not feel the donor’s pity. It is indecent to put a person in a situation in which he has no choice, and if he does not give his gift to you, he will do very badly from the point of view of morality and humanity. ” However, each specific desire is counted as unworthy by the community members themselves, depending on what the accepted norm of “compassion” is in the community.
The key word in which we found an intersection with a purely philosophical problem was the word "environment", or to be more precise, the concept of "social environment" . We have long since introduced this word into the everyday language of our development team in order to better understand what we do, to clarify the methodology and priorities of our development, as well as to designate the place of the service we are developing in the complex space of modern Internet startups.
Preparation for the philosophical conference provoked us to finally shape our thoughts into a text that now I want to give to the attention of the IT community. It seems to us that the concepts we have formulated can be useful to all those who develop social Internet services or who think of themselves as a social entrepreneur . In this text, using the concept of “social environment” using the example of the Internet donation service, an attempt is made to highlight a certain type of social Internet services and look at them in the broad context of human society as such, its structure and transformation possibilities .
What is a gift
The gift-dar is an international community in which people give each other their belongings and services free of charge and free of charge, without demanding anything in return. The mission of the community is to work together to learn how to give and receive as a gift and transfer this skill to the rest of the world. The community is guided by the traditions of Dar-dara and interacts with the help of the donation service, the site darudar.org .
')
The project was launched in late 2008 by a group of enthusiasts in the form of the internet service darudar.org. During the three years of the project’s existence, it has been joined by more than 100 thousand people from hundreds of cities (from Moscow - about 30 thousand), while it should be noted that most of the people joined the community thanks to an invitation received from their friends. The main countries participating in gratuitous donations at the moment are Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan. More than 2,000 items and services are donated daily. The most different and sometimes unexpected things are given: starting with books, clothes, mobile phones and ending with the services of an interpreter, computer repair and even a car.
The process of giving is as follows. The donor publishes information about his gift and his location. Those who need a thing are noted in those who want a gift, explaining why they need this thing at the moment. After that, the donor analyzes the descriptions of wishes and profiles of those who wish, and chooses the one to whom, in his personal opinion, the giving thing is most useful, then he agrees about this meeting with the person and gives him his gift. For the gift of a gift, it is customary to write public gratitude in order to certify to those around you that the gift actually happened and benefited the gift. The process of giving is governed by a code of conduct (called the “Dar-dara traditions”) adopted in the community. So, among other things, the code says, for example, that it is considered a shame to ask for or offer something in exchange, or it also says that it is considered wrong to appeal to the pity of the donor, putting him in a situation where he would be uncomfortable with his gift not to promise etc.
At Dar-dar, it was possible to create all the necessary conditions so that thousands of people would be happy to give each other their belongings, as it was possible before, only in a circle of very close people. In a different way, it can be said that a special social environment of donation was created, which is characterized by the fact that it was there that turned out to be possible in a multitude of actions of gratuitous donation to strangers. The main issues that would be interesting to highlight with the example of Dara-Dara in this article are how this social environment of giving is arranged, what elements it is made up of, how it is supported, how it develops, how it is connected with other social environments, what effect it has on each person individually and to society as a whole, as well as what reflexive processes in this environment proceed, how they are created and stimulated.
Daru-dar as a social environment
First of all, under the social environment, we understand a set of certain conditions that increase the likelihood of certain events in human society . For example, the popularity of businesses of a certain orientation is often not only a consequence of the economic conditionality of a given territory, but also a consequence of the impact of the social environment in which the people creating these businesses exist. Under the reflexive processes of the social environment, we understand those processes by which the existing environment changes, develops, improves, interacts with other environments . For example, the adoption of some laws and the abolition of others in a given area of ​​society’s life is an example of the reflection of a particular environment and how it changes, as well as how this environment interacts with other environments. With the help of what is created the social environment of gratuitous donation and from what key elements is it composed?
Word "gift"
To begin with, Gift-Dar introduces its language into collective use. The key word in this language is the word "gift", embedded in the name of the project itself. Previously, this word denoted events peculiar to the subjects, exceeding in scale of their activities the scale of an ordinary person. So, one could say “the gift of God”, or “the gift of nature”, or “the gift of the state”, etc. In the language of Daru-dara, the word "gift" was associated with daily activities, commensurate with the average person. This word began to be called all those things that each person can share with others without any damage to himself, without making a victim out of this, without remaining at a loss.
With the help of this word, some previously hidden reality was revealed, accessible to everyone, if desired. If you can put the above meaning into the word “gift”, you will be able to give everything that is associated with this word. The word “gift” provoked the appearance of other words derived from it, forming a special language: the donor, who wishes, the gift, to offer as a gift, to wish for a gift, to thank, thank you, etc.
On the other hand, the word “gift” was opposed in everyday language to the word “gift”, which is associated, above all, with acts of giving on a specific occasion or occasion. The gift implies that it is not necessary to have a reason for the act of giving, it is enough to realize that you have something to share with others, and you still need your desire to do a good and kind act.
Dara-Dar's language, which thousands of people are beginning to use, creates in the collective consciousness a space for awareness of the possibility of giving and personal participation in it. Without such a language, such an awareness would be more difficult to achieve. Indeed, it is one thing when you personally come to realize the possibility of disinterested acts, and it is quite another when you understand that in the language used by many, this awareness also exists, which means that your possible behavior has already been approved by others.
Experience a new social practice of giving
Dar-dar as a service offers a specific scenario to be followed in order to give something as a gift. Simplified, this scenario consists of the following steps:
- Offer your item or service as a gift in the form of text and photos
- Studying all those who wished the gift by expressing their request in the text
- The choice of the willing as a gift and the promise of his gift
- Arranging a meeting with the giver and giving him his gift
- Receive thanks for your gift in the form of text and photos
- Do not ask or offer anything in exchange
- Do not rush to promise your gift, but do not delay it.
- Do not give your gift to the first person
- Do not make a queue for the gift
- Do not beg and do not beg
- Give thanks for the gift you gave
And in society, a collective sense of reality and the naturalness of giving is formed, which is perceived as a given, as correctness, and not as an exception to the rules. People begin to trust each other much more, their fear of uncertainty and insecurity before the world decreases, it is easier for them to find a common language and mutual understanding, to help and support each other, it is easier to participate in joint affairs.
Awareness of reality alternatives
In itself, the long-term existence of the project Daru-dar serves the entire society as a vivid example of the fact that things and services between people can move not only on the principle of exchange, but also on the principle of donation. Such a living example creates in the collective consciousness another, alternative, possibility of human interaction, which was previously, if it was realized, only theoretically (the theory of communism), or was conceived not on such a large scale (within narrow circles of acquaintances and friends), or had a slightly different semantic dimension (in the form of charity, for example).
At a minimum, this visual opportunity should contribute to an increase in the number of daily gratuitous actions produced by people who know about the gift and therefore are aware of the reality and likelihood of similar relationships between people. As a maximum, the practice proved by the possibility of the existence of such a project as Duru-dar creates in the collective imagination space the reality of completely different projects, which are also built from the premise of interaction and cooperation of people on a gratuitous or thankful basis.
For example, it seems increasingly likely the emergence of projects based on the social practice of appreciation payments. When many products are provided free of charge, and a person is free to pay them on the basis of “pay what you want”, i.e. based on how these products or services really benefitted him, as well as on the possibilities of his personal budget. As soon as the density of the donation environment reaches a certain critical point, the emergence of such products will become a very likely reality.
Device community daru-dara
With the help of the Internet service darudar.org thousands of people began to interact, unfamiliar with each other in their daily lives. Regular interaction built around shared gift-sharing scenarios has led to the formation of an online donor community . The online community of donors , as well as the Internet service through which this community interacts, generate an environment of gratuitous donations . In order to understand how this environment is maintained, it would be right to consider how the community is organized, which is the direct carrier and distributor of the new social environment.
The principle of transparency (publicity)
The principle of maximum transparency is put in the basis of the relationship on the gift house. Every act of a person in the system is recorded in his profile: anyone can see what you gave, to whom and why, what you yourself received as a gift, how you formulated your need, how you wrote thanks for the received gifts. Such transparency makes it difficult to abuse the trust of donors: it is impossible only to receive a gift, and don’t give anything to yourself, or to receive a gift of many similar things, if you have already actually satisfied your immediate need, or to receive something as a gift. then sell it on another resource. Attempts of this kind immediately become obvious to everyone else, and they simply cease to deal with you.
On the other hand, the transparency of the profile allows a person not to forget what he did in the community, what benefits have already brought. This creates a personal story of each participant, the story of his involvement with the donation community. Each time, returning to the community and looking at his profile, a person remembers what he has already done and sees what he can still do. A community exists only to the extent that community members regularly reproduce the activities around which the community itself has been formed. Most people do this kind of activity when they see how others do it, when they repeat after someone. The transparent profile allows you to see how others act, what they do, and repeat after them, provoking a repetition in the future by other people.
Principle of self-organization
Another important principle laid down in the gift-dar is the principle of self-organization . The service has designed the tools by which community members themselves solve most of the problems that are inevitable in any large community of people. For example, in the publication of each gift there is a button “This is not a gift”, which everyone can click on. When you dial a certain number of votes, the publication automatically disappears from public access and does not count as a gift to the donor. And next to each comment is a button “This is an unworthy comment”, which is also available to every user. If a person writes comments that contradict the Code of Conduct adopted on the site, and they are considered unworthy, he is deprived of the right to write comments, and everyone sees it.
Such a system allows you to distribute the burden of managing the community among the maximum number of people and thus minimize the costs of administering the system. The unworthy behavior of people is not punished by the abstract authority of the administration, but is disapproved of the collective opinion of the whole community, which is a thousand times more effective for understanding the inadmissibility of certain actions. Possessing all the necessary set of self-organizing tools, each project participant understands that maintaining his own positive atmosphere within the community depends on his personal efforts.
Reflexive Dhar-dara processes
The gift-dare by its existence proves a simple truth: in order for some process — be it a general modernization or universal gift — to develop successfully, you just need to give people maximum freedom, but at the same time creating for them all the necessary infrastructure of interaction with each other. When people realize that their personal efforts envy a lot, they are actively involved and begin to spawn processes, self-improving the inherent flaws and shortcomings of any system. The environment itself begins to generate activities that were not originally laid when designing the system.
Thus, at the time of the gift, voluntary postmen appeared in their time — accomplices who themselves took upon themselves the task: to simplify the transfer of gifts between cities. These postmen collect gifts from different users and form one common package from which they themselves go to the post office and go through all the obstacles of an inefficiently functioning state postal system, saving time, money and nerves of other people. Another type of activity, self-generated inside the Dara-dara, is associated with the role of rangers. The rangers are accomplices who voluntarily commit themselves to helping everyone abide by both the formal and informal traditions of the community. Supervisors seek to understand everything that happens in the donor community, each time answering the question of how to relate to a problem or situation, how to act in one way or another, and share the accumulated personal experience with other accomplices. There are accomplices who are actively involved in the discussion of how to improve the service, what functions to add in it, and what to change to make it easier and more pleasant to give. There are accomplices who help newcomers to become familiar with the traditions of the Dara-dar, as well as with informally established norms of behavior and customs.
At one time, in all major cities, with a large number of participants, such a form of activity as General Donation Meetings was born. People agreed on a regular basis, every week, to meet everyone at the same time in order to distribute all their gifts promised during the week. This allowed each participant, instead of many separate meetings related to both the transfer and the receipt of the gift, to attend only one large general meeting in order to cross at the same time with all of their donations and donors. It is obvious that in this way a lot of personal time is saved and the probability of not meeting with the agreed person is reduced.
The code itself, focusing on which the donor community interacts, is not created in the form of clear and unambiguous rules that cannot be broken, but in the form of general principles that everyone should strive for. This allows the community to independently, through collective efforts, give a specific meaning to the norms of behavior adopted in the community. For example, in the code there is a clause regarding how not to express your desire for a gift: “Do not feel the donor’s pity. It is indecent to put a person in a situation in which he has no choice, and if he does not give his gift to you, he will do very badly from the point of view of morality and humanity. ” However, each specific desire is counted as unworthy by the community members themselves, depending on what the accepted norm of “compassion” is in the community.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/135796/
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