Abstract: The U.S. election has come to an end. Trump swept the United States with overwhelming momentum and made a strong comeback. In my previous article, I have very completely discussed the political and economic plans of both parties and their impact on the future cryptocurrency market. There are also many articles discussing related views, so I will not go into details. In addition to paying attention to the dynamics of the election during this period, the author also experienced and observed a relatively microscopic phenomenon. Some of my experiences were very interesting, so I have summarized them to share with you. Overall, in this US election, the "media war" between the two sides will greatly weaken the credibility of mainstream streaming media and X social media, and the Web3 social media platform may usher in new development opportunities. Investors need to cultivate new and controllable publicity channels, which brings convenience to related competing products in terms of financing channels. On the other hand, under the rule of Musk, X will become increasingly authoritarian. This "Dark MAGA" It is bound to be conservative on many cultural issues, such as abortion, immigration, LGBTQ multiculturalism, etc. The dictator's preferences will greatly affect the logic of the recommendation algorithm in X. Therefore, the trend of losing users who are on the opposite side of it is inevitable. Competitive product differentiation, thereby reducing the difficulty of promotion.

The poll results are extremely distorted, and the credibility of the mainstream media in the United States has been greatly damaged. The Democratic Party needs to find a new propaganda position.

During the period before the election, I believe everyone was more or less uncertain about the outcome of this election. Especially in the days leading up to the election, Harris seemed to be better in the election than Trump. The author is no exception. In my last article, I predicted that this election will be an extremely anxious process, so the results may not be confirmed until the last batch of votes are counted, so the entire cycle may last for some time. But in fact, Trump’s election can be described as devastating, sweeping almost all swing states and maintaining a lead throughout the entire vote counting process.

So how did this wavering come about? The main reason comes from the final push of the so-called "main streaming media" in the United States. We know that for a long time in the past, mainstream media has been the traditional propaganda position of the American establishment represented by the Democratic Party. These so-called "main streaming media" cover various forms such as television, newspapers, and online platforms. They often play a key role in guiding public opinion on major domestic and international events. In fact, these media are not neutral in terms of political preferences. Most of them are firm supporters of the Democratic Party, such as Cable News Network (CNN), (The New York Times), (The Washington Post) ) (The Washington Post), CBS, ABC, NBC, Yahoo News, Google News, etc. Some of these media claim to be neutral, but they seem to have reached a consensus on "anti-Trump." As for the main streaming media that are really on Trump's side, the only ones that are more representative are Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

In the days leading up to the general election, most of the content you can see from these media channels is biased in favor of Harris, including accounts of emergencies during the campaign of both parties, dynamic poll results, and even the impression that Harris is in early voting. advantages. This information will naturally affect the judgment of these main streaming media subscribers and believe that there is a possibility of a reversal in the election. However, the results are naturally quite different. In addition, the main streaming media has undergone a readjustment in supporting He Jinli's campaign. We know that the Democratic Party has experienced a coaching change in this election. After the Trump shooting incident, Biden's electoral popularity plummeted. At that time, before Obama, Pelosi and other big leaders made clear their positions, the main streaming media There were quite a few criticisms against Harris's replacement election, including doubts about her past political achievements. However, after the successful integration within the party, all doubts disappeared completely and support for Harris was fully launched. From an electoral perspective, this is naturally good for the Democratic Party, but it also reflects that the so-called mainstream media has completely abandoned its neutrality and fairness as a media, and serves more of the interests behind it. Therefore, the final election results clearly show that the American people are disgusted by this and are unmoved. Therefore, I think the credibility of the main streaming media has been greatly damaged in this election.

We know that for democratically elected politics, whoever controls the media has the initiative. They can not only influence the ideology of potential voters by weaving information cocoons, but also discredit political opponents or interfere with the implementation of policies through Fake News. In the context of the decline in the credibility of the mainstream media in the United States, the American establishment represented by the Democratic Party urgently needs to find a "Plan B" to make up for its shortcomings in internal propaganda. Among the interest groups behind the Democratic Party, there are many technology and global business With relevant capital, it is relatively convenient to support a social media platform that you can control and that is beneficial to you. This also brings convenience to related products in terms of financing and resource acquisition.

With the privatization of Twitter, Musk has effectively become the "dictator" of X, and his ideology is bound to cause users to question the neutrality of X

This election has proven the efficiency of the self-media-driven social media platform represented by The information cocoon that algorithms weave for users has greatly affected their political preferences, and its fairness is bound to be questioned even more after this election.

We know that the reason why Trump was successful in his first term was, in addition to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s “email scandal” self-explosion, thanks to her influence on Twitter, sending out more than 36,000 tweets in four years. , with 88 million followers. However, after the Capitol Hill incident in 2021, Twitter announced that it would "permanently ban" Trump and his microphone has since been turned off. Immediately following Twitter, Facebook and YouTube also took measures to ban Trump from speaking on their social platforms; giant technology companies Google (Google), Apple (Apple) and Amazon (Amazon) removed Trump support from their shelves Parler, an application widely used by users, has stopped providing related network services to Parler.

During that time, Trump’s promotional channels were scarce and he had to launch his own social media platform, Truth Social, to deal with this dilemma. The reason why many social media companies do this is because of their interests. We know that a large part of the emerging "tech elites" are born in Silicon Valley in California, and California is a stronghold of the Democratic Party. Naturally, there are many related interests. In addition, since technology industries such as the Internet usually require the support of the international market, they support globalization while suppressing potential competitors by funding lawmakers who favor strong regulatory policies. These are naturally consistent with the Democratic Party's policies of "big government" and multilateral cooperation. Therefore, in the context of the same interests, it is natural to choose to cooperate in suppressing the populist Trump.

It's logical. However, these were broken by Musk. In October 22, after half a year, he successfully completed the privatization of the listed company Twitter for US$44 billion, which means that Musk has unparalleled authority over the company. . For a long time after the acquisition was completed, the market questioned whether the operation was a failed attempt because there seemed to be no return on investment. However, combined with the current results, its original intention is very clear. After using "protecting freedom of speech" as a cover, it escaped the obstruction of many Democratic forces, coerced the world's richest man to complete the acquisition, and completed internal integration through large-scale layoffs. It clearly states its support for Trump. I believe many friends who use The law has done some processing.

In this political gamble, Musk is undoubtedly a winner. However, X's appearance during the entire election process did not become more neutral and fair because of this acquisition, but only went from one extreme to the other. And as X is privatized by Musk, this "Dark MAGA" is bound to be conservative on many cultural issues, such as abortion, immigration, LGBTQ multiculturalism, etc. And its preference will greatly affect the logic of the recommendation algorithm in It will help relevant competing products to reshape their product differentiation into more competitive products, thus reducing the difficulty of promotion.

Faced with resource dividends and market dividends, how can the Web3 social media platform better capture this opportunity?

We know that in the Web3 industry, there are also some decentralized social media platform products, such as Farcaster, Lens, etc., but I think that for a long time in the past, these products did not achieve very good results in promotion. I think the core reason is that Twitter's long-lasting monopoly position ensures that it has a scale advantage in the competition for "bulk information", and this is the most important competitiveness of social media platforms. Generally speaking, there is a lot of information on Twitter, and there is a lot of information. Complete and interesting information will naturally attract users’ attention, and the diversity of information can also allow the platform to better adapt to the fast-paced changes in real-time hot spots. There are always hot spots and popularity, which will also further stimulate Users' creative desire keeps the entire UGC ecosystem alive.

This monopoly position naturally forces many competing products to choose extremely segmented industries to build their own differences, which will naturally make them dwarfed and become toys in the subculture circle. The information accumulated on it is bound to become focused, which greatly reduces the core network effect value of social media platforms. When the hot spots on the track are exhausted, it will naturally enter a period of silence. At this time, the lack of heat will also cause the user's attention that was finally attracted to be lost. We can easily find this phenomenon in Farcaster and Lens.

So how can we better capture this opportunity when facing the inevitable user loss trend of X? I think the Web3 social media platform can start from the following key points:

(1) Use more transparent recommendation algorithms and data storage technology features to boldly compete with Use, whether it is the so-called "content monetization" or various reward airdrop logic, etc. In the author's opinion, these are really scratching the surface. I think the biggest advantage of the Web3 social media platform compared to traditional centralized social media platforms is the transparency and fairness of the recommendation algorithm and information storage brought by the technical solution. This is in line with the Social media platforms with freedom of speech as their core values ​​are undoubtedly the most suitable. Therefore, in the process of product promotion, it is necessary to always focus on this feature and directly compete with X, rather than attracting cryptocurrency users first. Then seek to break the circle. The dictatorship of This large-scale centralized credit shattering event is a rare opportunity for Web3 products to break. In addition, I think that in terms of product innovation, modular recommendation algorithms combined with AI are a good thinking direction. By introducing AI functions, users are allowed to customize recommendation algorithms, and at the same time, the algorithm market or platform is opened. Stimulating users' UGC, this kind of design that helps users break out of the information cocoon may win the favor of users.

(2) Be more aggressive in marketing, grasp hot social events, and actively attract "X vulnerable groups" from top to bottom: In terms of event marketing, I think the Web3 social media platform should be more proactive and use a more clear-cut approach to support "Non-MAGA" values, such as relaxing illegal immigration policies, protecting LGBTQ rights, women's rights, human rights, anti-authoritarian politics, supporting abortion, rights of ethnic minorities, rights of people of color, etc. Grasp relevant social hot spots and make your own platform a channel for speaking out to break the circle. At the same time, in this process, we actively adopt a top-down promotion strategy. We know that in this election, many celebrities in the entertainment industry, literature and art circles, and sports circles have clearly supported He Jinli. Therefore, through resource integration, we strive to win over a number of big names from Migrating the X platform to this platform will have a multiplier effect on the promotion effect.

[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.

  • This article is reproduced with permission from: (Shenchao TechFlow)

  • Original author: @Web3Mario

"The U.S. election brings new opportunities! The credibility of mainstream media has declined. Is there hope for decentralized communities? 』This article was first published in "CryptoCity"