Thread by @jonst0kes

This thread gets at something I've been thinking about for a while: the coming wave of decentralized messaging (= social networks, chat, email alternatives, etc.) will be fundamentally unmoderatable. Or rather, better to say that all moderation will be opt-in & localized.

https://twitter.com/normative/status/1454077693406875658

Bitclout.com is a useful case in point. The only way to moderate Bitclout is to stand up a chokepoint/portal (client app, web, etc.) & do filtering & moderation one layer up. But all the content is still there & public, so if you don't like the moderation you can move.

So in the very near future, then, people will select their own moderation regimes. They'll decide what kind of moderation they want by deciding which portal to use for interacting with the blockchain. Each portal is a "window" on the same chain. Really each is a SELECT query.

I like this "pick your own mod regime" thing in theory, & I also think I'm going to like it in practice. Why? Because in the world of crypto, in order to participate & especially to wield any power, you have to put skin in the game. You have to invest real assets.

I suspect what we'll find when all comms (broadly speaking) move on-chain, & all the speakers become true stakeholders in a game where any move could cost them real $$ (or where they stand to make real $$), is that we'll look back on the past ~30yrs of free/subsidized comms...

...as a kind of early Industrial Revolution type period with sweatshops, black soot covering all the cities, child labor etc. Obviously, crypto's fusion of real capital with messaging will introduce whole new problems, but I think it'll be a better class of problems.

Anyway, if you haven't been thinking about the real case for creator coins & other forms of on-chain messaging, this thread probably sounds pretty cuckoo. I'd do an explainer on the Substack, but I'd need to base it on work I've read that's not yet published. Soon!

To clarify I a bit, I think the true problem with the 1st wave of social media is a combination of qualities:
- Global one-to-many connections w/ strangers
- All messages are free (as in beer)
- No speaker has a stake in the health of the community or platform as a whole

So the need for to be engaging in order to attract engagement -- that's directly downstream from the fact that "hey, this engages me!" is the only kind of stake I have in the platform. And if it stops engaging me, I move.

But what if I had invested literal, actual money?

What if my on-platform reputation & activities were valued (i.e. by a creator coin) & I was participating in a messaging economy? The barriers to exiting an economy where you've accumulated capital are much higher than exiting a soc media circle. You gotta stay & make it work.

I want to add this point to the main thread b/c I think it's important:

https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1454095177237340167

Anyway, what I've said here is why I actually have quit following the FB moderation wars. Such controversies are essentially about the regulation of horses on public roads, when the automobile is already here & spreading. The "moderation at scale" discussion is almost over.