The Open Web is a Tool, Not a Silver Bullet

Reply: The Open Web is a Tool, Not a Silver Bullet

The open web will not solve harassment or abuse—it never has. Those things existed online long before FaceBook or Twitter and will go on after they are footnotes in history books. IRC is/was a non-centralized chat system that was the 90s equivalent to Twitter in many ways. Abuse there happened every bit as often as it does on social networks today. I remember; I was there.

Heh, Usenet, anyone?

See, and now that I think of it—I think the Open Web is now the alt.* hierachy. While Twitter and Facebook are the Backbone Cabal. (See The Great Renaming.)

Maybe all we’re doing is going through centralizing and redecentralizing cycles here.

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