Maciej, founder of Pinboard.in (delicious.com alternative) is convinced that technology as it exists today cannot come anywhere close to accurately modeling the nuance, subtlety and complexity of human relationships. But the real question, he asks, is why would we want to model it anyway? He suspects that it all comes back to selling ads. Because even an inadequate “social graph” is more than enough for effective ad targeting.

It’s not news that most companies are reductive when doing consumer market analyses. Margins can be thin and scale is the key to growth, but when you zoom out past a certain point, people turn into dots on an axis. People hate big companies exactly for this reason.

The thing is, as we get used to accepting the influence of social networks on our lives, will we all start to see each other as marketers do? After reading this article I am a scared that we might. There are all these social interaction startups popping up everywhere, but they are based on the exact same inadequate relationship model that only services the ad industry: where you’re from, what you like, who you follow, who follows you, where your friends live, etc.

Can startups innovate around this? Can they let us build a relationship online without requiring a “friend” button, “like” button, or “follow” button? Without requiring you to fill out a profile? I think this type of thing once existed on newsgroups and old-school forums, but have we forgotten how to use the internet to truly relate to one another? Or are we designing our way out of it, one button at a time?