Could we Build a User Governed Social Media Platform?
We'll never know the full implications of the decisions made by Nikita at twitter, just because they changed their algo.
That is bullshit.
A brief history
I had ChatGPT summarize the governance models of the major social media platforms.
| Platform / era | Governance in one line |
|---|---|
| Usenet | An anarchic federation: server operators chose what to carry, while individual newsgroups could appoint moderators, with no universal sovereign. |
| Slashdot | A technocratic jury system: editors selected stories, trusted users scored comments, and other users audited those scores through metamoderation. |
| Wikipedia | A consensus republic: communities write and enforce most rules collectively, while the Wikimedia Foundation retains the constitutional and legal backstop. |
| Classic Digg | Algorithm-mediated direct democracy: users voted content up or down, but the company secretly determined how votes translated into power. |
| Platform federalism: Reddit sets the constitution, volunteer moderators rule individual communities, and users vote on visibility—not governance itself. | |
| Facebook / Instagram / Threads | A corporate monarchy with a supreme court: Meta controls policy, product, and algorithms, while an independent board reviews a narrow set of moderation decisions. |
| X / Twitter | An owner-led monarchy with a citizen fact-checking jury: X centrally governs the platform, while Community Notes can add context but cannot enforce the rules. |
| YouTube | An algorithmic bureaucracy: Google writes global rules, machines and employees enforce them, creators may appeal, and users mainly vote with attention. |
| TikTok | An algorithmic benevolent dictatorship: the company centrally controls rules, enforcement, and distribution, with AI doing much of the governing at scale. |
| Discord | Private-city governance: Discord establishes universal law, while each server owner appoints a local government that can impose stricter rules. |
| Mastodon | A federation of city-states: each server makes and enforces its own rules and can cut diplomatic relations with other servers. |
| Lemmy | Federated Reddit: instance administrators govern the jurisdiction, community moderators govern forums, and instances decide whom to federate with. |
| Bluesky | Composable governance: the main app has default rules, but users can move identity, choose feeds, and layer independent moderation services over the network. |
| Nostr | Protocol anarchism: nobody governs the network globally; relays decide what they will host, clients decide what they display, and users can route around either. |
| Farcaster | Rough-consensus technocracy: developers propose protocol changes, node operators decide what code to run, and clients independently govern presentation and moderation. |
| Steem / Hive | Token-weighted plutocracy: stake determines voting influence over block producers, funding, rewards, and ultimately the network’s direction. |
We've never had a social media platform governed by users!
What might that look like? How could we do it? Guaranteed, there has never been one bootstrapped by a bigger gov nerd than chainpy.eth and the folks at Agora.
Lets try. What would, should, or could it look like?
What if all revenue and expenses for the platform was onchain? What might be achieved, if alignment was found? Is it even possible? What mechanisms would be needed?
It needs to fund itself, it needs to throw off enough revenue and profit to sustain itself, but other than that - it wouldn't need to think about global domination, pandering to advertisers, or surveillance capitalism.
How would it work?
Hi there! GM.
I love the question, and the “governance in one line” table is a great way to open this conversation. My only caution is that these labels can flatten very different layers of governance. Mastodon is federated, but an instance may still be controlled by one administrator; Reddit delegates moderation while retaining authority over the platform; and cases like Wikipedia or Social.coop complicate the claim that user-governed social media has never existed.
I might frame the gap more narrowly: we have never seen a genuinely user-owned and user-governed social network achieve mass-market network effects.
By the way, network effects may also be the hardest part of the challenge. It could be less about designing the perfect governance model from scratch and more about helping existing efforts such as Farcaster, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Nostr combine their strengths and reach enough critical mass for migration to become real (and from there, refine the governance model based on actual operations.).
User governance also should not require everyone to behave like a delegate: settings, surveys, usage choices, and feedback already provide valuable signals, while smaller groups with greater commitment and alignment can take on representative responsibility.
A better classification
Instead of assigning each platform a single political regime, I would examine six layers:
This produces clearer families:
It also reveals why putting revenue and expenses onchain would help with financial accountability, but would not by itself create user governance. The deeper questions are who appoints operators, controls ranking, changes policies, resolves disputes, and can amend the governance system.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
You raise a very valid point.
I think I'm most interested in figuring out how to release control in terms of:
I'm very open to innovating on all those fronts. If I could find the magic mechanism that felt credible and defendable, without adding cost, or creating a security, then I'd run with it!
Hi there. I’d be very interested in helping think through that co-design. :)
My instinct is that the credible path is progressive rather than trying to do everything at once:
So the transfer takes place by domain and through milestones
The key questions seem to be:
Who should we bring into the conversation to answer these questions?