Friends, I’ve hesitated to share this position for several years.

Friends, I’ve hesitated to share this position for several years. I won’t any longer. I don’t mean for it to sound heretical or disrespectful to those who sincerely disagree about what our social media future should be.

I simply believe it’s a view I’ve rarely seen articulated …

clearly, and that now—when the consequences of social media run amok are visible to most informed people—is the right time to do so.

To begin, I have never bought into the Fediverse/Mastodon shibboleth that cloistered, self‑moderated communities will inevitably produce a …

healthier and more desirable alternative to massive social media silos. Not because the goals of better safety and greater choice are unappealing—of course they are—but because, if genuinely successful, a global network of connected cul‑de‑sacs would almost certainly accelerate …

social fragmentation. We would retreat further into tribes, conclaves, and filter bubbles, cut off from most others and increasingly unlikely to evaluate or absorb external ideas, norms, and realities.

That isolation is part of how we arrived at our current MAGA‑era …

dysfunction. By allowing media‑fed bubbles to shape the beliefs and behavior of entire populations, we have invited the political calamity now polarizing and paralyzing much of the world. This trajectory is already well underway, and designing network architectures that …

encourage more of it feels like openly inviting the same outcome—with potentially hideous unintended consequences.

A better solution, in my view, would be a massive—possibly even publicly funded—network governed by absolutely ironclad rules for civil engagement. Smaller …

private communities (including those in the Fediverse) could freely attach to and interact with it, but the same public rules would apply to everyone when they do. Communities could filter what they consume internally, but what they emit into the public space would be held to a …

shared civic standard.

Repeat offenders would be removed from public participation, and possibly even from broader civil life. Social behavior would once again carry real social—and perhaps economic—consequences, much as it did when communities were smaller and accountability …

was unavoidable.

Such a framework would almost certainly be rejected by ideologues, purists, charlatans, and cultural predators—people who resist rules either because they didn’t write them or because those rules would most constrain their own behavior.

Is this feasible? I …

believe it is. Strict, rule‑based systems like The WELL and MetaFilter have existed for decades and have worked remarkably well. They are often criticized as exclusive, elitist, or inaccessible—and they are, deliberately. They are exclusive to those willing to abide by a small …

set of shared behavioral norms. There is no inherent reason educated, civic‑minded people could not scale such a system successfully.

Many would even be willing to pay for it. Yes, it would exclude millions of trolls, primitives, and other toxic actors—but that is the point. …

Those uninterested in a functional civilization will always have their digital cesspools. Everyone else would gain a space where engagement is governed by enforced civility, mutual respect, and basic human decency.

And because such a system would likely appeal to a broad …

cross‑section of society’s most educated and transformational thinkers, artists, educators, leaders, journalists, pundits, and engaged citizens—people who share a respect for humanity’s scientific and cultural progress since the Enlightenment—it could help usher in a more …

disciplined, substantive, and productive era of public engagement and discourse.

I am convinced this model can scale rationally, economically, and politically. None of the current approaches do, regardless of their good intentions, fine aspirations or technical …