The Quantum Mechanics of Social Networks
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The Quantum Mechanics of Social Networks
A few weeks ago I saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. One scene, in particular, has remained with me. In it, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) chats with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) at a dinner party. There, Oppenheimer describes how we, as most things in the Universe, are largely empty space that are being held together solely by the whims of subatomic, or quantum, particles like electrons.
The question that haunts many Physicist, like it did Oppenheimer and Einstein, is why? A profound conjecture in much of Quantum Physics is that, at this quantum level, the rules of nature aren’t much rules, but suggestions. Nature is not deterministic, but instead a contradiction of probabilities and possibilities.
As Oppenheimer famously explains:
If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no'.
Understanding how elements work at the smallest level is critical to understanding a system. Such is the importance of first principles thinking and asking why and why and why until you arrive at the foundational blocks of logic. When such systems are so complex and rich like say, our entire reality, we take for granted the atomic, or quantum, exchanges and relationships that make it so.
What holds them together? Why do they exist? Why do they persist?
We as a society consistently organize and operate in such interconnected systems, or networks.
A network is a structure that facilitates the exchange of something of value between two or more individuals. The value of a network increases as more individuals or groups of individuals become users of the network. A great example is the telephone. A telephone network exists as an exchange of audio information between people. One individual speaks, or produces, this information (supply-side); another individual listens, or consumes such information (demand-side). A telephone network becomes more valuable the more users are on it as you can speak to more relevant listeners and listen to more relevant speakers. Conversely, a telephone network has no value with a network size of one.
For the sake of this essay, I want to focus on social networks. Specifically, I want to analyze social networks involving taste. There are a number of incredibly large and active such networks. On reddit, r/malefashionadvice has 5.5M members, while r/thriftstorehauls has 2.7M members.
This post will seek to answer the following questions:
What are the building blocks, atomic units, of these social networks?
What bonds these atomic units together?
How are they kept stable over time?
The Laws of (Tasteful) Nature
Let’s begin by defining the actors that supply such a network with its atomic unit. We will call them creators. Creators are individuals that spend time and energy producing content that’s core entertainment unit is taste. The form factor of this content may vary across a recommendation, a video, a explanation, a URL link, etc.
Take, for example, the Reddit user tarachandra_’s post above. She produces such an image to demonstrate her taste. This fulfills her need for her esteem and aesthetic. She does not seek financial capital in return, but social capital. Individuals within this subnetwork (r/thrifthauls) reward her with upvotes and comments, which are social capital currencies that give tarachandra_ status within this network. They do so because they share a common interest that bonds them together (thrift) and come to expect, consume and reward authentic content from other individuals whom share their interest. Within this subnetwork or group of thrifters, the highest form of esteem one can achieve is having good taste because taste is wealth in fashion and artistic endeavors.
Breaking down even further, how does an atomic unit in such a network (a post) come to be?
Each atomic unit in a network has it’s own subatomic production process of quantum particles and forces.
The production process requires activation energy, or a call to action, to begin. From a more economic perspective, we can also think of this as a contract proposing to hire the creator for a job. The Job to Be Done is manufacturing their taste into content.
Every creator has their own unique taste. Taste is closely tied to their identity. Their taste is their own proprietary model that’s subjective. While taste is their proprietary engine, a creator must power that engine with fuel. This fuel comes in the form of time and effort. Their taste and the contract stipulate the direction and boundaries of where to source and what end product to produce. The contract in r/thrifthauls stipulates that the content should be a thrifted item that one wears today, and the creator’s taste stipulates what that should be within those boundaries.
Through the act of sourcing, creators refine and improve their taste. A creator then refines the sourced raw materials (images, links, etc.) and manufactures it into the desired content form factor. All throughout this process, a creator is spending time and energy, which are finite resources that have real cost as it depletes.
This is determined by the original contract. Every contract has an incentive or contract value that’s aim is to inspire the creator to turn on the machinery and produce content.
For a rational producer to manufacture a given product, the revenue earned from producing a product must exceed the cost of producing it. In this production process, creators do not earn revenue (financial capital) but earn value in the form of social capital.
The potential value of social capital for a given contract is a function of the (1) elasticity of supply — or how quickly a producer shifts production levels in response to social capital changes — the (2) order quantity and (3) currency risk.
Elasticity of Supply
A producer who is more elastic values social capital more than one who is less elastic. Elasticity also captures the reflexive value a producer receives from the act of refining their taste through the production process. For producers who more so value the act of improving their taste, a small change in potential social capital will increase production levels greater than those with less elasticity.
Order Quantity
The order quantity of a contract is a function of where the content is distributed. The greater the distribution, the more units of content is needed to be produced to meet demand. Given the physics of digital production, the marginal cost of production is (essentially) zero. A post that is produced and distributed once to social media can be duplicated an infinite amount of times (quantity). Thus a social network ‘orders’ millions of quantities of a viral social media post when it is distribute to its users via millions of unique Feeds. The greater the distribution, the larger the audience size, the higher the order quantity, and the greater the potential social capital reward from a given contract.
Currency Risk
Currency risk is a function of the legibility, fungibility and banking system of the social capital currency. Every network or point distribution has its own unit of social capital currency. Instagram has Instagram likes and Instagram follows, TikTok has TikTok likes and TikTok follows, and so on. These are discrete currencies that are not fungible from one network to another.
If a currency is not fungible nor a legible unit of account, it cannot be exchanged and recognized for its value. Moreover, if the networks that recognize the currency do not have a trusted and stable banking system to store the currency (i.e. persistent follower graph tied to an identity), than it holds less value as a storage of social capital and has a higher discount rate.
Thus, we can calculate the social capital reward for Producer Y given Contract X.
The Social Capital of Contract X equals the product of the elasticity of the Producer Y and the the Quantity requested in Contract X divided by the Currency Risk of Contract X.
The production process, as we have revealed, also has marginal costs. The marginal cost of production is simply a creator’s time and energy. The marginal cost of distribution is the (1) psychological cost, or stigma, of distributing the content for Contract X — which is based on the stipulations and network of the job — and the (2) variable distribution costs, which takes the form of the friction to distribute the content (1) within a given network and (2) across multiple networks if the contract stipulates so.
Thus, for a creator to accept Contract X, the Social Capital of Contract X must exceed the Marginal Cost of Production and Marginal Cost of Distribution of Contract X.
This constitutes the Creator side of the core value exchange and quantum forces that create the atomic unit that underpin social networks.
Current Solutions of Network Architecture
A graph is a term commonly used to describe the interconnections among people, groups and organizations in a network.
A network’s graph depends on its bond. A social graph describes a network that bonds atomic units (individuals, content, etc.) based on their social connection. Facebook is such an example. Atomic units in these networks must overcome the forces of entropy and create attraction. Attraction comes in the form of users explicitly telling Facebook who their friends are on by friending them. These bond then creates your social graph which, like a network of atoms bonding into elements and molecules, creates properties that express a unique compound. Such a compound is your unique Facebook Feed and experience, which dictates what content you are shown and have access to based on the properties of the social bonds that form your graph.
An interest graph describes a type of network that bonds atomic units based on the connection of their interest preferences. There are two types of bonds that make this possible, explicit bonds and implicit bonds. Explicit bonds determine interest connections based on an individual explicitly telling the network his or her interest preferences based on their explicit actions. These bonds then create your explicit interest graphs, which create the properties that determine what you are shown and have access to on the network.
Implicit bonds use AI to overcome the forces of entropy to infer your interest preferences and then pushes connections between atomic units that themselves did not explicitly attract. These bonds then create a unique network that is expressed in your Feed, and based on a user’s stated behavior of watching, liking or swiping past a unit of content, constantly breaks apart bonds and creates new ones as the forces of attraction change. This is how TikTok, and increasingly Instagram, work.
Connecting Taste via Social Graph
To share ‘taste’ content with one’s social graph, users commonly share content in group chats that live on iMessage, Instagram and WhatsApp. This results in asynchronous production and consumption cycles where users discover new ‘content’ and recommendations sporadically depending on when another user in their friend graph produces such content. This happens infrequently, without cadence and is comingled with other content in their group chat, hurting the user experience.
The value exchange for the creator is also much weaker in this circumstance. As mentioned, the creator produces and share such content in these social circles as it demonstrates their taste. In exchange, their friends reward them with social capital in the form of implicit esteem and explicit likes, hearts and comments — both of which create status. But the social capital of this value exchange has high currency risk and low quantity orders. Let’s explore why.
Low signal to noise ratio: Group chats consist of a myriad of interactions. Tasteful recommendations thus get drowned in this noise and so the creator does not receive as much social capital and status. This leads to high marginal distribution costs.
Non-fungible currency with no banking system: We often have many group chats amongst different friend groups and social circles. In this paradigm, the core value exchange — exchanging social capital for work that demonstrates taste — is not fungible outside a given subnetwork or chat. Meaning, the accumulated likes and status that a creator builds in a single friend group does not necessarily carry over to another as there is no storage system or legible record of account that ties a users social capital to a persistent identity.
No Accruing Benefits & Mounting Losses: As a creator accumulates more social capital within these networks, they are not creating accruing benefits or mounting losses based on the social capital that they accumulate, which ideally would allow them to share their taste in a single network with all their relevant friends and acquaintances who reward them with follows and status. Similarly, users do not benefit from rewarding the creator with a like or follow as it does not lead to more personalized recommendations and a better filtration of less relevant content, as many social network algorithms provide. This is because these networks are chronological rather than algorithmic in nature.
Connecting Taste via Implicit Interest Graph
TikTok, and increasingly Instagram, distribute content across a network that learns a users interests based on their implicit behavior. Creators produce a myriad of content across infinite niche subjects and interests and are rewarded with social capital in the form likes and follows. The network creates accruing benefits by creating more efficient distribution the more it is used, leading to greater follower (and thus social capital) accumulation, and thus mounting losses.
Similar to Instagram, TikTok does not provide product tagging features or make it accessible for creators to easily share items they’ve discovered or sourced. This creates friction for consumers and results in a third-party paradigm of link-in-bio or affiliate solutions that change the value exchange from a social capital one to a financial capital one. This appeals less to many creators, thus they do not produce as much of this content. Moreover, creators compete with other content types for distribution. This means that there is a lower signal to noise ratio for their content.
via Explicit Interest Graph
Consumers explicitly join, subscribe and follow tastemakers on Reddit, Substack, Instagram and TikTok to consume content.
On Reddit, users engage in anonymity and do not tie social capital to an identity, weakening the social capital value exchange and the incentive for production. Thus, content from ‘tastemakers’ is anonymous and much more amateurized, as there is no way to vet the credibility of a tastemaker through a legible reputation score (i.e. followers), and tastemakers gain less status.
On Substack, content production requires much more work and is largely editorially generated, not user generated, with the value exchange between creator and consumer being a financial in nature.
On Instagram and TikTok, consumers follow their favorite creators, but status and social capital holds less weight as taste is less of a core entertainment unit on the platform. Thus, the relative follower count compared to other producers is much smaller and they must compete for user attention within a feed.
Many Creators that gain value from demonstrating their taste among their social circle to accumulate status are not conducting this behavior on social media networks. This is because they are not able to tag the product, which is critical to demonstrating taste, and have a less explicit contract that motivates production. Creators are prompted for recommendations in group chats, not on social networks, from their friends. Moreover, there is less psychological cost to sharing such content within your social group than your social network (thus the marginal cost of distribution is lower for these contract). Finally, current solutions mostly operate under affiliate commerce contracts which change the value exchange from a social one to a financial one, which redefines the calculus for many creators who do not have interest in producing such content for explicit financial rewards.
A Tasteful Future
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
So the proverb goes. Proverbs should be revered as compression algorithms that store and transfer wisdom across generations and physical boundaries. What wisdom does this proverb store?