🟧 The internet’s distribution problem

Making the internet work for creators

The second reason why Ben’s milestone is significant is that he, better than anyone else, has identified and articulated the force that has overwhelmingly shaped online media over the past decade: Aggregation Theory.

Ben’s theory describes how and why a few major platforms have come to dominate the flow of infor... See more

As anything scales too effectively – from restaurants and ad agencies to social networks and search engines – the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, we crave the artisanal coffee shop. There's the identity piece of it, where we want some degree of distinctiveness. But there's a practical side too: ... See more

By getting off the ‘take treadmill’, and focusing on core-niche groups of shared interests, producers can create regenerative collective social spaces and new thought. Supporting these new spaces and the cultural outputs of such should be the primary goal of any digital organisation.

“Everyone bifurcates the world into content and distribution,” Whaley told me. He has brown hair, is of average height, and was wearing a nondescript gray t-shirt and jeans when we talked. “From the beginning, we viewed those as the same thing. Each object gets better with more participation, and so does MSCHF. Scale is not the goal. Scale is a too... See more