The strangest thing to me about our social tools and networks is how super-limited their feature-sets and philosophies have been in human terms.
It feels like designing a house entirely around the best use of new light-switch technology. How can we reinvent the bathmat???
It's weird.
Some platforms ... are almost entirely moderated by dedicated volunteer labor
As you note a few of those platforms are just now subject to strikes from that very pool of labour 😀
I think underpinning all of this is a much bigger discussion we do need to have about how we actually do participate. People currently carry a lot of default assumptions about online social spaces:
The assumptions are all technically wrong. These things have never been free, and often they've been funded at a real deficit. That's why they keep dying every decade or so.
But they've also been moderated semi randomly and with very different legal and governance frameworks. And sometimes just tyrants.
Most humans don't know these things. They'll need to.
Erin Kissane
Gaëtan Perrault