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.
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:
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.

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More from @jonst0kes

27 Oct
Berny, with respect, this thread is about how self-identified "moderates" are totally, completely screwed in the present moment.

Rufo's central, shocking claim is that CA public schools will invite kids to chant a prayer to Aztec gods of human sacrifice. THIS is your response?
As a parent, I would love to read a debunking that sets my mind at ease that some US public school kids are not, in fact, being asked to pray to Aztec gods of human sacrifice, in seeming violation of Engel v. Vitale & "no prayer in public schools." PLEASE tell me Rufo's lying.
But instead, this niggling about the true meaning of "counter" in "counter-genocide" is your rhetorical intervention that's going to save us all from extremism? I do love you man, but how do you not get how weak this word policing is in the present, insane moment?
Read 8 tweets
27 Oct
Not gonna say who I'm subtweeting but philosophy twitter continues to deliver an endless stream of unintentional self-owns of an entire discipline. I honestly think their guild should step in & w/ a #NeverTweet policy.
There are many fields that people already had low or mixed opinions of, like economics. But philosophy as a discipline was obscure enough that I think few outside academia had an opinion on it, until the rise of larger philosophy twitter accounts changed that for the worse.
Of course, the current sorry state of things is really just reversion to a very ancient mean. Back when philosophers plied their trade in the agora, their insular cluelessness was roundly mocked by playwrights like Aristophanes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_cuc…
Read 4 tweets
27 Oct
This weekend I'm taking my oldest daughter on her first "hunt." "Hunt" is in scare quotes, b/c we're going to a ranch where we'll be put in a blind that overlooks a timed feeder. The critters will come, & we'll pick some & shoot 'em.

This is cheaper than buying meat from a farm!
A few weeks ago I went down a list of TX farms that sell whole & half hogs, looking to stock the freezer, sending out emails to find anyone w/ an available pig. I got 1 reply, & he quoted me $5/lb.

That's $750 for a 150lb pig. Our hunt w/ unlimited hogs + 1 buck is $400.
Wild hogs & venison are not as fatty as a farm-raised hog, but nonetheless this is now a good, cheap way to stock a freezer if you have the right gear (thermals + a rifle) & know what you're doing (i.e., shoot the smaller sows & ignore the big boars).
Read 10 tweets
27 Oct
When the ports are closed, the shelves thin out -- a great many people now viscerally feel this dynamic, having faced it at their local store. Our dependence on others to make all our stuff is no longer abstract. Nobody in their right mind would feel secure in such a situation.
I understand it's popular on here to dunk on the "empty shelves" thing as fake & driven by politics or clickbait, but my trip to the local HEB last week was freaky & disturbing. Yeah there was a lot of food, but there was space on every aisle. It made me feel weird & unsettled.
I'll confess what I really think: Summers should be watching this situation deteriorate w/ great nervousness re: whether he'll end up in prison, because he's one of the chief architects of the scheme to hand US industry over to our #1 rival.
Read 5 tweets
25 Oct
Despite the strong impression given by the tweet & the article, the offer is open to ALL officers from out-of-state, regardless of vaccination status. This story is finely tuned by WaPo for maximum vaccine culture war damage. 😒
That state down there on the bottom right corner of the NYT COVID hotspot map? The one that's now done with COVID? That's the state DeSantis is inviting any out-of-state officers to move to & telling them their vax status doesn't matter for their job. I dunno. Seems not that bad?
I used teh googles & found that it costs about $100K & 18mo to fully train a new police officer, from recruit to cop. So DeSantis's $5K offer ploy sounds pretty savvy. This is info you might learn from the article if the point of it weren't culture war. policefoundation.org/recruiting-sel…
Read 7 tweets
23 Oct
LOL this is completely wild. This is the head of freaking NASA giving a UFO speech that ~5 years ago you could only have gotten from a dude at a conference w/ panels on topics like "Remote Viewing Your Past Lives" & "Nephilim: Grays or Reptilians?". What a time to be alive, man.
At this point, I really hope it's literal aliens, because if it's not then all the alternatives I can think of are worse -- e.g., ultra-advanced foreign adversaries, mass delusion at NASA & DoD, a rogue black budget program, etc. None of that is really very attractive.
I do understand that the alternatives are more likely than "literal aliens." I'm just saying that everyone one of them (at least that I can think of) is a hair-raising "yikes!" Aliens is the least disturbing, because if it's them then clearly they're mostly just leaving us alone.
Read 4 tweets

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