All about social networks

Traditional federation lacks modularity. Hosting, distribution, moderation, algorithms, and business logic are located in the hosting instance. This creates a weak separation of powers. Ideally, users reduce the power of a popular instance by devolving specific functions to other providers. We want to preserve rights in the default course of... See more

A logical extension of personal computing is a belief that everyone ought to possess maximal personal rights and make all decisions on their own.

This view runs into scale problems. One-way broadcast is relatively easy to make perform well and the shape of the problem supports low-coordination meshes (BitTorrent). Likewise, small-group chat and... See more

We believe the future of social networking should be open, give users genuine control over their data and experience, and create accountability through transparency. That means building differently—not just better moderation policies, but a fundamentally different architecture that puts power back in users' hands.

I’m sympathetic at a cellular level to the complaints of the communities who want and need safer places to be together. I’m also still stuck believing that big-world global platforms are never going to provide those kinds of places. And also that we need the big-world layers to connect safer places together.

The culture that feels the most dangerous, and, thus, exciting to young people, will be what you can’t see online. And the most dangerous thing for platforms is not racist garbage. It’s unmonetizeable content. The “metric” that will matter most going forward will not be the numbers at the bottom of a post or video, but the human beings in a room... See more