Current social networks don't have great tools for dispute resolution. They're a combination of anarchy (people yelling) and tyranny (arbitrary deplatforming).
An alternative approach is a global moderator hierarchy. In the event of dispute, the lowest common ancestor mediates.
The moderator hierarchy: a possible implementation
- founder is moderator 0
- founder sets up initial hierarchy, appoints mods 1-N
- mods recruit new users
- new users choose a mod upon signup
- new users can be promoted to mod
- mods are comp'd via token 1729.com/network-union
Choosing a mod has aspects of both friending & following.
Like following, it's asymmetric: when A moderates B, A has privileges that B does not.
But like friending, it's symmetric: you may require both A *and* B to opt in for A to take on the responsibility of moderating B.
A moderator hierarchy makes the implicit dispute resolution process of a social network explicit. That has pros and cons.
A seemingly paradoxical idea is that greater decentralization may allow greater centralization.
If you can exit at any time, you may be more willing to delegate control on a daily basis to a centralized actor. Trust because you don't have to trust.
These ideas are old. You can call it unbundling followed by bundling, as early Netscape did. Unbundle via decentralization, rebundle via centralization.
From a different perspective, Freeman wrote about this years ago in The Tyranny of Structurelessness. jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny…
We're in the pre-Code of Hammurabi era of social media.
Right now, digital governance is some combination of blue checks, online mobs, and platform bans.
But clear written laws ("15 day suspension if you do X") and a mod hierarchy might be the next step. history.com/topics/ancient…
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Divide & choose is a procedure for fair division of a continuous resource between two parties. The protocol proceeds as follows: one person cuts the cake into two pieces; the other person selects one of the pieces; the cutter receives the remaining piece. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_an…
The veil of ignorance concept: choose a rule as if you had no knowledge ahead of time as to whether you'd be ruler or ruled. Ideally, this would incentivize participants to select rules impartially and rationally. fs.blog/2017/10/veil-i…
From seeing like a state to learning like a machine.
A state can only make rectilinear decisions based on paper forms. Scalable but binary.
A machine can make curvilinear decisions based on digital data. Scalable and statistical.
Of course, some states have partially adapted & have some of their data online (albeit in often insecure databases).
But it’s just a retrofit. It’s not like the leaders are looking at metrics on the health and wealth of their constituents. Nor are they making decisions via code.
File sharing was once huge, and may become huge again.
The fundamental new primitive that blockchains offer for protocol design is tamper-resistant global shared state.
With this, someone could do a crypto Napster, KaZaa, or PirateBay. Probably pseudonymously, or in a country like Denmark with a "Pirate Party". Maybe not in music…
P2P, MVC, CBC
Blockchains allow us to combine the decentralization and programmability of the P2P era with the global state and monetizability of the MVC era.
For protocols with global state, the new architecture is then client-blockchain-client, or CBC.
The creator economy is becoming part of the cryptoeconomy. Because legacy social media platforms have no real concept of digital property rights.
Substack, Twitter Revue, and Facebook Bulletin are all great. But they are in a sense intermediate steps.
Ghost goes further. You can run it at a domain you control.
Decentralized social media platforms go further still. You hold the private keys.
Under communism, there was no such thing as personal property. Everything that transpired in the PRC & USSR was downstream of that economic illogic, the root cause.
The restoration of private property was one of the keys to unlocking the Chinese economy. npr.org/sections/money…