Thread by @anildash

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but I’ll just leave this as a placeholder for now: most vocal criticism of web3 sucks right now. Not because it’s necessarily wrong on a factual basis, but because it’s wildly ineffective & ignores context.

Regardless of how valid the criticisms are, web3 is already too big to fail. So the abstinence-based moralizing and scolding isn’t going to work. What’s happening now is that the bad actors & grifters from the old guard are the only ones who are engaging with this new domain.

This doesn’t excuse, or dismiss, the rampant exploitation, opportunism & manipulation that’s going on around crypto. It’s pervasive, and deeply destructive. But if the only way thoughtful people engage is by condescending to well-intentioned participants, then we’re all screwed.

I talk all the time to artists who say “I just want to support my work, and it seems like there’s an audience.” or individuals who say “I found a nice, welcoming community that’s having fun talking about art and tech.” Those are reasonable views. And we should engage with them.

Just as importantly, the potential of a technology is both what it can do technically and what it can do socially. Yes, you can often use an existing database or payment system to do things more efficiently. But people *believing* a particular tech is good for a purpose matters.

The aesthetics of the most visible projects are not to my taste, but that’s largely irrelevant to the social dynamics that are happening. I want to push those who are rightfully critical to engage more effectively and thoughtfully. Otherwise you’re handing it all over.

Trying to prevent exploitation by scolding people as being fools is simply not going to work, especially when those doing the scolding are perceived as having already profited from the previous generation of platforms — which caused their own extensive harms.

As this thread spreads outside of folks who know me, people are (understandably!) reacting to "too big to fail". What I mean is: the idea of web3 has meaning to a lot of people who are going to want to fill that social need, and there needs to be some responsible answer for that.

Here's a better articulation; I think @robinsloan catures it perfectly. "I do not think Web3 is a desirable or even tolerable path forward for this web right here, but I take its lesson well." society.robinsloan.com/archive/notes-…