Thread by @wheatpond

There's something I call the "bottom of the barrel" trap that is why things like @parler_app are unlikely to ever achieve significant success. Here's how it happens, and how crypto narrowly avoided this trap ⬇️

Twitter has a censorship problem, but if we're being frank, it's not a *huge* deal for most users most of the time, at least yet. It's ideologically frustrating though, so the @parler_app people went off and made their own Twitter, but with free speech as a core feature.

The problem is, the 1st users this kind of thing gets are typically people for whom censorship *IS* a huge and pressing problem; actual neonazis, e.g. With that seed, @parler_app loses any chance of being a general purpose gathering place.

At best, it might become a nexus for right-aligned people who don't mind the nazis so much; at worst is becomes an extremist community where even moderates feel unwelcome.

The bottom of the barrel trap is harshest for social networks, because they depend on network effects that never show up if the "founding population" is sufficiently extremist.

Crypto was at risk of falling into this trap 2011-2013, when the perception was that Bitcoin's main use was for buying drugs (please set aside whether DNMs were actually much of BTCs volume and just focus on the perception for a sec).

But we seemed to have avoided it by just not dying, continuing to build, and allowing the world time to realize that BTC is both extremely useful as an inflation hedge, something which almost everyone on earth has a need for, and also not actually very good for buying drugs with.

I'm v excited by the decentralized web stuff happening now (@hns @SiaTechHQ @IPFS etc) and hope that people building in that space will think hard about how to attract founding users that are moderate and play nicely with others, so they can avoid the bottom of the barrel trap.