Social Platform Ownership & Governance

For a modern take we can look to Vyld, a biotech company fom Germany established in 2021. As a producer of women's health products made of seaweed it was paramount for Vyld that their company was as good as their product.

It just doesn’t make sense to produce a great, sustainable product, but

then have an exploitative company structure and culture.

In... See more

The open protocol community has inherited two intellectual traditions, both inadequate to this problem: an engineering functionalism that treats protocols as neutral infrastructure whose political consequences are someone else’s concern, and a governance minimalism that treats any collective decision-making structure as a potential vector for the... See more

Strategic philanthropy has more difficulty funding bona fide organizers who are embedded in and responsive to the communities they serve. In contrast to their support for outspoken moral activists, philanthropic funders cannot meaningfully predict in advance what particular issue(s) grassroots organizers and their communities will prioritize. That... See more

Social media differs from note-taking apps. Users provide content and interaction for free. "Why should I pay when I'm the one creating value?" Fair question.

But maintaining the space where that expression happens costs money. Playing in a park is free. Maintaining the park requires taxes.

I’ve noticed a trend in the fediverse of thinking there’s nothing except open source and VC-backed companies. But there is so much in between. I love small, bootstrapped companies that just charge a fair price to users without outside funding or ads.

Some of my favorite apps and services are like that. Acorn, MarsEdit, Nova, Feedbin, Day One. You... See more

Part of what prevents people from starting their own software company is the pervasiveness of a singular popular narrative: the idea that money is the primary reason to do so. That the way to make software profitable is to scale, and the way to scale is to get investment from VCs. Software, for better or for worse, plays an increasingly primary... See more