Posted by: Couch_Surfer
I think the general issue is that a true 'free speech town square' is actually a valuable thing, but it does need some (trigger warning to conservatives) regulation and moderation.
This doesn't play well with the business model of a traditional for-profit social media ad model in my opinion. It needs to be thought of and run more like wikipedia (non-profit, open) to allow for thoughtful decisions based on what is best for the user base (not the customer base - advertisers).
Fortunately, someone is out there trying to do that. https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/ Maybe we'll get to watch Elon's 44BN burn as users embrace this new open source version, I think that'll be a fun show.
This is breathing new life into Mastodon. Hopefully, it takes off, but community moderating is how you get insane feedback loop bubbles like some subreddits.
I think if you want a true public square experience it needs to be a government-run service with actual policing just like an actual public square and every user should be verified. If it is government-run it could also be set up for citizens of voting age as well. It sounds almost dystopian compared to the free market tech industry we have grown used to but actual public squares don't make money and have a police presence. With the profit motive behind all apps that are not open source, they can't function as a public good. Mastodon has that going for it but open source has a lot of issues as well and it won't have a way to verify users.
Of course, the government would make it suck somehow and people will still flock to the place where they can talk shit and nobody knows who they are, but that is what Reddit is for.