Thoughts on moderation and decentralizing Twitter: Consolidating and fragmenting forces are forcing this platform out of the status quo. Decentralization is voluntary fragmentation, which, if done correctly, can anticipate these changes and establish new norms.

Consolidating forces would make Twitter more like a state, whether through its governance processes, or through regulation. Twitter could also be acquired at some point, making moderation of global conversations even more centralized.

Fragmenting forces can be seen in users leaving. They go to other platforms, private communities, and decentralized networks - each with their own governance and norms. But once there, they are mostly in new silos, and cut off from Twitter.

Turning Twitter into a protocol would be attempting a structured, voluntary fragmentation. Communities would be given more autonomy over moderation decisions, but a global conversation could continue even among communities with different moderation preferences.

I believe in good governance, and making room for different definitions of what that means for people. Making Twitter more like a state with democratic processes could achieve better centralized governance. I think this direction should also be explored, but that’s not my focus.

Better decentralized governance can be achieved by focusing on how to make it easy for developers and users to experiment with different moderation methods in a protocol ecosystem, and what checks there are when those choices run up against the limits of the law.

Decentralized networks are complex. But the real challenge is not how to build a decentralized social network - there are already many of those, and many ways to do it. https://medium.com/decentralized-web/decentralized-social-networks-e5a7a2603f53

The challenge is how to do it in a way that enables better moderation at scale, with an end goal of achieving healthier conversations. Many decentralized social networks are small, and have not hit the scale at which serious moderation problems emerge. So they punt the problem.

Mastodon and Matrix have reached that scale, and the lessons they've learned and the problems they're struggling with are instructive. I advise anyone building a decentralized social network right now to start with the end in mind, and think through what happens at scale.