Discussing Trade Policy on the Internet

Shifting the IELP blog to a new platform has led me to do a bit of reflection on the past, present, and future of discussing trade policy online.

I am vaguely aware that there were Usenet forum discussions in the 1990s, and there may have been good trade policy conversations there, but I missed all that. I first started talking about trade policy on the internet in some Yahoo forum, back when I worked at the WTO in around 2000. Was this allowed? I don't know because I didn't ask! I was using a pseudonym, so it seemed unlikely anyone would find out. And anyway I didn't talk about WTO disputes or WTO-related issues. The conversations were more about economic development broadly speaking.

I put a discussion forum on WorldTradeLaw.net some time around 2002, but wasn't able to generate much in the way of online conversations. Then in 2006, when blogs were taking off, I decided this would be a fun thing to host, with tenured law professors who felt free to speak their mind engaging in interesting and provocative debates. Then I started blogging myself and found that I enjoyed it.

After a few years, social media, and in particular Twitter, started to emerge, and these microblogging platforms took a lot of the conversation away from blogs and blog comment sections.

Perhaps in part as a response to the difficulty of having productive conversations on short form social media apps, and also to better monetize the exercise of writing, in the late 2010s Substack "newsletters" started as another place for long form writing. So now we have both "newsletters" and "blogs" as names for this kind of writing.

As these long form writing developments were taking place, over in the social media sphere, Elon Musk took over Twitter, changed the name, made it less useful in a number of ways, and did and said the things that he did and said. That has led to a bit of an exodus from Twitter to other social media sites.

As an early Twitter alternative, there was something called Post, which I tried and liked, but it didn't survive. Then came Bluesky, which is working pretty well for trade policy news and discussions, and has features – such as (relatively) easy to create custom feeds – that other social media apps don't have. That helps it rely less on company-provided algorithms, which I think moves things in the right direction.

These technological/structural aspects of Bluesky have been overshadowed a bit by political fights, with X/Twitter vs. Bluesky feuding over whose brains have been cooked by being too online and who is in an echo chamber.

Some people reacted to all this by deciding they couldn't handle the tone or culture of the main microblogging platforms, and have starting doing more substantive posting on LinkedIn. I always thought of LinkedIn as the place where people would wish me congratulations on my work anniversary, but it now seems as though there are real substantive trade policy discussions going on there.

And other people moved towards something a bit more private, with Twitter DM groups evolving into WhatsApp group discussions.

While all this was going on, there have been efforts to promote the "fediverse," "a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other ... using a common protocol." With the new IELP blog using the Ghost platform, which can connect to the fediverse, I set up a Mastodon account for the first time so that I could see how the blog was being distributed there. In doing so, I came across the remnants of an attempt at starting a trade policy conversation there as part of the Twitter exodus. I'm not sure that can be resurrected, but I do see some activity around the fediverse approach, so maybe it can grow again. For that to happen though, someone needs to make the place more user-friendly.

(There are also podcasts for talking about trade policy, but as many people have heard me whine, I strongly dislike listening to podcasts. If they put out a transcript, I'll happily read it, but I've probably listened to fewer than 10 podcasts ever. I don't mind being on them, but I hate listening to them!)

Taking into account all that has come so far, what does the future hold for discussing trade policy online? What I'd like to see is a well integrated network of long form posting and short form microblogging. The problem I have with the microblogging apps/sites is that it all seems so fleeting. There's a stream of content that's hard to track and remember. For something more permanent, it seems to me that longer form posts on websites are better. At the same time, the microblogs are a good way to bring more people together and get them involved in the conversation. Someone needs to come up with an approach that combines the two. It seems like Substack is trying to be that platform, but their founders have run into some of the same problems Elon Musk did, so I'm skeptical that is going to be the place.

Beyond the specific Substack controversies, I also think things would be a lot better if we could get away from "walled garden" platforms. I strongly prefer a protocol based approach. The fediverse is one version of this, but while Bluesky looks a lot like Twitter, which is part of why it took off and Mastodon did not, it is not just a standalone app: It's part of its own protocol-based network, and other apps that use the same protocol can connect to it. The ideal setup for policy/politics conversations might involve a networked group of long form posting sites that also connect with various social media apps. If everything is done on the same protocol, everyone can connect, but can still keep their separate cultures, moderation approaches, etc. (Annoyingly, the fediverse is being done on a different protocol than Bluesky's, but perhaps some clever programmers will be able to bridge the gap, which they have already done to a limited extent).

I know there are folks working on these ideas, and I'm watching how it all evolves. For many people, it can feel like this is out of their control and they are at the mercy of big players who have different interests than their users. But I really believe we all have a role to play and can make a difference. There are good people trying to making products and services that have a positive impact on society, and if you are in a position to do so, it's worth taking the time to seek them out and use their apps and websites.