Once, it was the case that attribution was important. This is the idea that you won't plagiarize someone and cop their ideas as your own, but rather you would point to their work and give credit where credit is due.

Attribution is a nod to intellectual property rights.

Social media has destroyed the idea of attribution.

Blogs, from their inception, made a big deal about attribution. A blog would link to other sources, which is not only honest, but also legitimizes the post and its author. Books make a big deal about attribution. Footnotes and citations...

And then social media came along and every social media platform hates its when you link to another site. Why? Because it takes you away from the social media platform and its desperate need for revenue.

People on social media all the time tell you that they will "steal" your meme. "I'm so stealing that."

It's one of the reasons that I like posting here on my site, Opinion Paper. I can give proper attribution. Property rights are important. Just as social media gathered as much information from you as possible to sell it to advertisers, not caring about your rights, the platforms themselves push people to avoid property rights and deter proper attribution.

In 2003, this was a big deal because a blogger was lifting content from someone else and got busted for it.

The Agonist [a blog site], was a frequently updated collection of war news links, analysis and commentary that became popular during the heaviest Iraq fighting; at one point, the site was getting more than 100,000 hits a day and was mentioned in the New York Times and on NPR.

Another blogger, however, asserted that Kelley had been lifting information from Stratfor, a subscription-based intelligence service, and posting it to The Agonist without attribution. "I made a mistake," Kelley told a Wired magazine reporter. (Kelley did not respond to a Tribune request for an interview.) He since has provided links and attribution for all his sources, but the damage was done.

"To be fair to the world of blogging, he was caught by another blogger," says Reynolds. "That's how the blog world works - it's inherently self-policing."

"His problem is that he didn't follow the rules of blogging," continues Reynolds. "When you're posting stuff with no sources, with no links, you just become some guy on the Internet who's saying stuff."

That will never happen on social media today. Social media rewards you for not providing attribution.

I love that Elon bought X and it allows for you to say just about anything, but punishes you for attribution. As does Facebook. That's just true.

Here on my own site, though it has a greatly limited audience, I can at least recognize and reward property rights and I don't harvest information about you to profit from it.

The whole thing gives me incentive to expand this to a network - opinionpapers.com. I own the domain, but haven't created it yet. But I think it's important that I do.