All about social networks

In every case, the platform's architects // successors assumed that the product was the platform and the community was an emergent feature that would re-emerge given similar conditions. They had the relationship exactly backwards. The community was the product and the platform was the container, and when the container breaks, the product spills and... See more

Some of the people populating the world’s feeds are doing valuable work—the journalists and open-source-intelligence gatherers trying to confirm events and produce original reporting, for example. But they are outnumbered by propagandists, trolls, anxious commentators, war-market gamblers, and clout chasers

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.