For a long time, I have been criticizing the view that Twitter is a "city square" where moderate management is called "censorship" users have the right to become platform members and controlled audiences. The following content will answer for you.
1、 What is Twitter?
Supporters of this position almost regard Twitter as a practical tool. Limiting the activities of the platform is actually an unconstitutional restriction on speech. Surprisingly, this is a modern "new wave" supporter who claims that the libertarian view of Twitter is not worth providing typical protection for private companies due to its insurmountable network effect and monopoly position.
I agree with the old liberalists: Twitter is a private company, which has formulated its own terms of service, and the government should not make operational decisions on behalf of Twitter. No one should have the right to access the services of private companies. Without requiring specific platform audiences, there are unlimited places for freedom of speech. Obviously, turning hate speech platforms into Twitter is not a good business because they will lose advertisers. Think you can't be with you. The idea that Twitter competes is absurd. It has many social network competitors.
As a private company, Twitter not only has the right to censor comments in the way they think fit, but also has a well-designed platform that allows them to censor comments in the way they think fit. Twitter has a better user experience and more profitable business. Few people want their own business. There are four things on the Twitter timeline that have not been audited. Twitter has always been untenable. A private company cannot create a truly smooth speech platform. When they tried, the platform became a sewage pool that almost everyone ignored. There was no business model, just like four chans.
The new social dimension enables us to meet those who want to be fully open "City Square", who give priority to careful management and planning experience. The two views seem to be opposite, but in fact they are completely consistent. In fact, I don't think there is any difference between the groups represented by these two statements. They just noticed different parts of the dysfunction of modern social networks. In the past few years, private companies have been trying to become defenders of freedom of expression and places with basic etiquette rules, but they have failed.
2、 Can Nostr and Farcaster have both?
You can't have both. Pressure from the government, advertisers, employees and the public will force private companies to restrict speech. In addition, any management action may be abused in the future to deprive many people of their rights. Private companies cannot become public squares, but agreements can.
Protocols such as Nostr or Farcaster may require licensing and anti censorship, because no one can send a delete request in a distributed network. Of course, this is an imperfect solution, because if you stop here, you will only get a distributed 4chan, and no one will be interested in it. You need a secondary private company and customers to act as the curator and moderator. Users can choose to join and pay for the management to provide a better experience. Twitter itself may come from Nostr or Farcaster content curators, and provide you with advertisements beside the content to make the platform free. All these are different. L operators may have some overlapping audit decisions, but there will also be many non overlapping audit decisions. Therefore, no one has the risk of "de platform". Unless you have completed all the different risks at the same time, the impossible tasks prohibited by manager L. Even so, for those who can stand it, such a person's post can still be seen on L1 without review.
Let's delve into L's two attempts: 1: Nostr and Farcaster. I am happy to use both and will provide my non-technical experience, as well as the potential and limitations I see. Nostr and Farcaster use repeaters to store social data and transmit it to users. Farcaster uses Ethereum architecture, and Nostr does not use blockchain.
3、 What is the difference between Nostr and Farcaster?
It is worth noting that Farcaster is a VC supported company with a well-known team and excellent products. Nostr is not a company at all. It was established by an anonymous person without funds and is obviously in the early stage of development. When fiatjaf talked, I confirmed that Nostr's only fund was Jack Bitcoin grant. Later, fiatjaf and jb55 split up. The latter is splitting up. The latter is developing Damus client on iOS and MacOS. Although Farcaster and Nostr set up clients and services on it, Farcaster seems to go further in this process. In fact, some design options of Farcaster make development easier. Nostr's simplicity is to balance the recent difficult development with more potential use cases in the future.
The current user group of Nostr is mainly Bitcoin users, while the current user group is mainly Bitcoin users, and the Farcaster user group is mainly Ethereum users and technology entrepreneurs. In many ways, this is also reflected in the design choices of each platform. Like Bitcoin, Nostr gives priority to simplicity, neutrality and the convenience of operating its own repeater. Like Bitcoin, Nostr avoids venture capital, starts a company or has a well-known founder. Use it. Farcaster is more difficult and expensive to run a hub, but more difficult and expensive. Farcaster asserts that some design tradeoffs still allow "complete decentralization" while giving priority to recent use cases and optimized products that are almost ready for retail users.
Farcaster follows a more traditional technology startup model. Their products have been carefully polished and now look very happy. Both efforts are aimed at creating a primitive social dimension for the Internet: I think it is a moral obligation. So many social dysfunction is the result of our current corporate social layer trying to provide everything for everyone. The layering method of social media combines the password punk principle in L1 and the importance of L with the institution to serve the social experience that meets everyone's needs.
summary
To sum up, Twitter without audit has always been untenable, and a private company cannot create a truly smooth speech platform. When they tried, the platform became a sewage pool that almost everyone ignored. There was no business model, just like the four chan. Therefore, the "social layer" addresses the needs of both sides of the political spectrum: First, do not worry about the "censorship" and "de platform" social platforms, and allow users to choose to join the selected experience of the moderators they trust!
