As far as decentralization and curated platforms go, I think the former is practically a prerequisite for the latter. It all boils down to moderation. Moderat

As far as decentralization and curated platforms go, I think the former is practically a prerequisite for the latter. It all boils down to moderation. Moderation is what makes the difference between a productive debate and a room full of idiots screaming at each other. Sure, centralized services can and do have moderation, but when they grow past a certain size, this seems to break down catastrophically. I believe this begins to happen when a service grows past serving the needs of a single community, and begins taking on various factions and tribes with conflicting needs and interests. This is a problem which absolutely confounds the centralized social media giants of the day. No matter what approach they take, they are bound to piss off millions of users, so they do next to nothing short of removing death threats. The end result: a practically unmoderated forum, and a room full of idiots screaming at each other. I don't recall this problem being nearly as pervasive in the days where each community had it's own independent bulletin board with active moderation. There were trolls, but they were the exception, not the norm. Different communities have different needs, and applying a one-size-fits-all moderation policy is harmful to productive discourse. There is a difference between what behavior is acceptable at the library, the coffee shop, the church, and the pub, and online communities are no different. Each community needs moderators, but they serve different roles within each one. Federated services (ideally) make this as frictionless as possible.