Open Social

It captures something that I think a lot of us in tech have been feeling but haven't quite articulated: that the social web feels increasingly rented, and the rent keeps going up

Easy. Trust cryptography. I generate a private key and sign everything as me. This takes out all the BS. Of course you cant age verify and anonymous accounts and spam become easy. But that is your trade-off. Nostr allows relays to filter out shit they dont like. So you can have your 4chan but also your more moderated sites too.

The main thing standing in the way isn't technical feasibility, it's governance and control

The social graph, at least in Bluesky's own collection[0], is made up of the sum of follow records in individual repositories on PDSes. Anyone can enumerate them.

[0] A collection is basically an app's particular set of records stored in a user's PDS repository. Here's an example using the Bluesky CTO's follow records: https://pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:ragtjsm2j2vknwkz3zp4oxrd/app....

These are summed up by Bluesky's app server (app view) and then used to fill out following lists in apps that connect to that server through its API.

A fact checking or web of trust tool could pull these records down and use it for exactly this purpose. It could even weight by who they repost, for example.

Governments can and do censor domains. A theoretically censorship-proof system is impossible; even communication over bluetooth or radio can be shut down by signal jamming and physical persecution.

Also, you technically "own" your data on any social network. If you put a public key in your bio and archive every post, you can move to another network. Then use friends and close followers to broadcast your new location; those who care will probably find you without much effort, but if not, Open Social doesn't solve this problem either.

However, I still think Open Social is an improvement. Most social networks are really bad these days: manipulated engagement-driven algorithms, locked-down data accessible via poor UI, toxic community, and inconsistently-applied unspoken rules. These issues all have workarounds, and can still happen on Open Social (BlueSky's community is toxic, I don't know if its algorithm is gamed or its global moderation is reasonable). But it certainly makes them harder to form and easier to avoid:

- If everyone's data is available raw via API, it's easier to create your own algorithm and frontend (or realistically, use someone else's which is better designed and more suited to you personally than what a generic social media company would make)

- With all data available, it's more likely people will develop better algorithms to filter out toxicity and discover interesting posts. At minimum, it's more acceptable and easier to create whitelisted groups, where one person maintains an "algorithm" that simply selects posts they (and others who are granted invites) have determined are not trolls.

- If data access and ban lists are separate, the same network can have multiple ban-lists, so being banned isn't "all or nothing". You can choose a ban-list with rules you agree with and continue to see posts that most others would prefer banned. If no ban list is dominant, there's a good chance the rules that the ban-lists share are reasonable; you can worry less about being banned inconsistently or for a widely-considered unfair reason (e.g. upsetting a specific moderator), because in those cases you'll only be banned from one list.

- If having a public key and archive of your data is the default, and your followers' frontends automatically recognize the key and find your new domain/hub (e.g. if someone links it to the old hub), it's easier to move. If BlueSky shuts down tomorrow, some clients can just be updated to point to another domain with all the data and continue working as if nothing changed. Whereas if Reddit shuts down, in theory one can develop a clone from scratch and populate it with the archived data, but users would have to re-register and it would be a huge mess (+ legal issues).