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I don't think this is ever going to work in practice because there is a significant incentives misalignment. The people moving to other platforms are doing so b

I don't think this is ever going to work in practice because there is a significant incentives misalignment. The people moving to other platforms are doing so because the tech giants are trying to stamp out free speech. Someone who uses the platform for anything other than political speech has little reason to jump platforms to something that has significantly fewer people and an underdeveloped interface. You're guaranteed to create echo chambers of only the speech you sought to expunge. More importantly, we should all revisit the world politic of exactly 10 years ago, where the biggest story was the Arab Spring--anti-government protests in the middle east. At the time, social media was heralded as a major factor in spurring the protests, despite tens of thousands eventually dying in the conflict. Governments were condemned for blocking access to the sites and many free-speech advocates attempted to develop work-arounds. Social media enabled the self-determination of the people in the middle east, something we should all care about. Regardless of how people feel about the capitol riots, the war on free speech from silicon valley should scare the shit out of all of us. They are setting the precedent now for curbing any revolution in the future. The idea that "healthy communities" are the target really depends on who's doing the diagnosis.

jMyles 6y ago
> Someone who uses the platform for anything other than political speech has little reason to jump platforms to something that has significantly fewer people and an underdeveloped interface. In addition to qualms about the idea that there is a significant amount of speech that is truly "other than political speech", I think you're missing a huge (in fact, the biggest) reason for flight from social networks: the mass-scale gaslighting that happens when closed-source algorithms decide to depict the lives of your friends in a way that's designed to produce consumer behavior rather than to give you insight over your community. To me, the reason to herald the rise of more decentralized social networking is to separate the profit motive from the feed.
gfodor 6y ago
All new networks bootstrap off of a niche, by definition. This is a particularly volatile niche, for the reasons you mention, but I've often felt given the wider trajectories it was inevitable that politically suppressed speech would bootstrap the communication analog to bitcoin, must like illicit transactions did the same for that decentralized system.
swebs 6y ago
>Someone who uses the platform for anything other than political speech has little reason to jump platforms to something that has significantly fewer people and an underdeveloped interface. I just want to keep up with my real life friends without everything having to be snooped and datamined by Zuckerburg, Dorsey, Bezos, et al. The fact that they're now trying to control how people think is just an extra reason.
- jhowell 6y ago
  > The fact that they're now trying to control how people think is just an extra reason. I thought they were controlling what people could post on the platforms whose terms require consent, not controlling the thinking of those people. Controlling how people think, now that *would* be impressive tech.

jMyles 6y ago

> Someone who uses the platform for anything other than political speech has little reason to jump platforms to something that has significantly fewer people and an underdeveloped interface. In addition to qualms about the idea that there is a significant amount of speech that is truly "other than political speech", I think you're missing a huge (in fact, the biggest) reason for flight from social networks: the mass-scale gaslighting that happens when closed-source algorithms decide to depict the lives of your friends in a way that's designed to produce consumer behavior rather than to give you insight over your community. To me, the reason to herald the rise of more decentralized social networking is to separate the profit motive from the feed.

gfodor 6y ago

All new networks bootstrap off of a niche, by definition. This is a particularly volatile niche, for the reasons you mention, but I've often felt given the wider trajectories it was inevitable that politically suppressed speech would bootstrap the communication analog to bitcoin, must like illicit transactions did the same for that decentralized system.

swebs 6y ago

>Someone who uses the platform for anything other than political speech has little reason to jump platforms to something that has significantly fewer people and an underdeveloped interface. I just want to keep up with my real life friends without everything having to be snooped and datamined by Zuckerburg, Dorsey, Bezos, et al. The fact that they're now trying to control how people think is just an extra reason.

jhowell 6y ago
> The fact that they're now trying to control how people think is just an extra reason. I thought they were controlling what people could post on the platforms whose terms require consent, not controlling the thinking of those people. Controlling how people think, now that *would* be impressive tech.