No. We’ve seen time and time again that platforms with no moderation tend to do two things: 1) Attract “objectionable” content. 2) Repel the vast majority of

No. We’ve seen time and time again that platforms with no moderation tend to do two things: 1) Attract “objectionable” content. 2) Repel the vast majority of people who object to such content. Hence the general view that [insert platform depending on personal views] is a “cesspool”. In an extreme example, let’s go with “won’t someone please think of the children”. Imagine the news story the first time a web3/crypto/whatever “uncancellable service” hosts the exploitation videos of a kidnapped child who was sold in to sex slavery. I know these kinds of “think of the children” scenarios are much maligned on HN but the vast majority of the world isn’t HN. In this scenario 99% of the population wouldn’t dare deal with the service, tech, etc in the example above. Ask anyone walking down the street about the “dark web”. If they’ve heard of it at all almost every person will say it’s that thing for criminals, CP, drugs, etc and they’re scared of it and don’t want anything to do with it. Meanwhile here on HN it’s fairly routine for someone to pop in the comments and talk about exclusively browsing with tor… The HN bubble is real. Plus, regardless of how you feel about things like Tornado Cash I don’t see a lot of people advocating for the repeal of CSAM laws (as one example) so you have a completely different level of enforcement there. Outside of some serious fringe I’ve never even really seen them debated. Truly uncancellable and/or unmoderated services are a complete non-starter for 99% of people walking down the street. You’re describing “dark web 2.0” and the adoption (if any) will likely look exactly the same. Yes I understand tor is used by activists under oppressive governments, etc and that’s fantastic. The difference for this discussion is tor hasn’t received tens of billions of dollars of investment like the web3 ecosystem has with the promise it’s going to completely change the world. If the bubble, hype, etc reflected the realities I’ve described in this post I wouldn’t be skeptical. I’m skeptical because many of the fundamental concepts (like being uncancellable) are completely incompatible with mass adoption and everything we know about people and platforms.