Thinkspot: an Answer to Social Censorship?
Thinkspot is a new social media platform created by Dr Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist who has gained huge popularity over the past few years due to an array of academic talks, interviews, and podcasts. All his talks have addressed the largest of social issues, from #MeToo and the gender pay gap, prison sentences to totalitarianism. Thinkspot’s birth comes in contrast to the more heavily regulated online mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, all of which seem to be in a constant state of regulation, aligning with the whoever may be feeling victimised online.
Thinkspot emergence counters the regulation that Peterson seems to think overshadows other platforms. Thinkspot will allow its own members to coordinate and regulate itself, with comments/posts being voted up or down depending on popularity. If the comment fails to gain more than a 50% upvote, then the comment vanishes from sight. The idea stems from Quora, where the highest voted comment gets moved to the top of the thread, and therefore is deemed the most valuable by all the members.
Peterson himself says, in ‘12 Rules for Life’, that Quora was a ‘curios’ platform due to this voting system, and says that he often ‘turned to Quora, looking for questions to engage with’. It was within this search that he soon found an online audience, gaining ‘a hundred and twenty thousand’ views, and ‘twenty-three thousand’ upvotes on a post that asked ‘What are the most valuable things everyone should know’. His popularity from here on eventually fed his ideas enough ideas that he wrote ‘12 Rules for Life’. This voting system will be a key part of Thinkspot makeup.
So will Thinkspot strive, or will it become a base for extremist views and online ‘trolls’. Well if Quora, or even Reddit, are anything to go by, then it is clear that this voting system is a great strategy to create an online network where the members referee themselves. The ‘anti-censorship’ stance suggests that more obscure, explicitly or drastic conversations will occur, yet this does not necessarily suggest that the views will be more extreme.
Thinkspot therefore will be an interesting experiment into the social media game, to see whose voices have been left unheard. Peterson’s own stance again political correctness fuels this new platform, and is not the first time he has championed complete freedom of speech. After the passing of Bill C-16, Peterson’s fame grew tenfold in Canada and internationally as he rallied for complete freedom of speech without censorship from minority groups. Thinkspot feeds off that same idea, and opens up the uncensored online world to anyone willing to pay the membership.
Thinkspot’s paid membership will give members the chance to monetise their online content, similar to Patreon. Specific details about the cost, or sign up process are unclear, as issues with the website are still being amended in advance of its release. The one rule that stands Thinkspot aside from its competitors is the 50 character minimum rule. This has taken some criticism online for going against the ‘free-speech’ motto of the website, however I believe this character minimum forces users to articulate and describe theirs views in a way that provides evidence to bolster their opinions. This will eradicate quick, back-handed comments, and threads becoming dominated by meme references and short quotes. Instead it forces users to engage somewhat in the discussion at hand.
Thinkspot may end up growing in this new niche in the social media world to become another giant next Facebook, Twitter and the others. Too often, large companies are bending the accommodate individual views, and are trading in cheap sales tactics instead of focusing on expanding free speech. Thinkspot in contrast will provide a raw depiction of people’s thoughts online, but alternatively, may die young as a result of their paid membership structure. With the release coming in the next foreseeable months, Thinkspot has raised the issue of how the large social media companies have become too politically involved and too malleable in their rules and restrictions to truly represent the views of all their users.