IMO adding a spatial component (_where_ you are matters) would go a really long way toward reducing the human messiness that Django is talking about here. He's totally 100% right that so far nothing has truly worked in the digital space.

Which is, in part, why I think modern social media is broken.

I agree in principle and I think someday in the future we might have that. So far in this conversation, I haven't tried to apply LLMs or AI to the problem much at all. Basic sentiment analysis, perhaps, but it's not really necessary to mitigate most of the social media problems.

(Also, fully aware that was a joke, but also... it's relevant!)

Also, just be clear, I'm not saying it's easy or that we could do it tomorrow. The current world-view around social media is quite deeply entrenched and unlikely to change.

I'm more approaching this academically: I think the original sin of social media was making content king, instead of location.

So in that sense, the complexity of human relationships is mitigated quite a lot by simply saying "hey, we can't all be in the same room."

Your micro-feed idea from the very top is almost exactly what we're talking about: it's a semi-private space with its own identity and social norms. The smaller the *space* the less moderation is required. The larger and more populous the space, more moderation is required.

Totally! But there are entire classes of social relationship problems that go away when you introduce things like location and space to a place that previously didn't have it.

Ah, should we have one? While I understand the appeal of edit buttons, I question whether it's the right tool for the job! We don't get edits in real life, and we get along just fine!

Aren't edits a symptom of "internet is forever," which comes with its own set of problems?

IRL, yes, you cannot invoke physics to get someone out of a restaurant.

But in a digital world that treats itself like a physical space with physical rules, you _can_ enforce these things as if they were physics.

All of which can be circumvented by a sufficiently big jerk.

But when you actually build it into the system, when you codify those rules and enforce them in an immutable way, you've introduced physics.

The problem with the restaurant analogy is that it _only_ relies upon human moderation. It relies upon other customers to complain, waiters to feel getting involved is worth their meager wages, someone fetching a manager. It relies on social conventions and self-awareness.

If user123 somehow comments, and engagement in the convo drops or ends, user123 takes a rep hit. Next time it's harder to participate. Not impossible, you can always repair. (versus modern ban-or-nothing approach).

No sentiment analysis needed.

Then user123 shows up to comment, but they have low or no rep. The system injects friction due to the delta between space participants and user123: rate limits, a silenced effect until they've read context to catch up. Possibly LLM-based check that says "That might disrupt. Are you sure?"

Consider a system where you have reputation between the people you're talking to in a space. That rep doesn't travel, but it's relevant in this space. You and I build rep through sustained engagement. Sentiment doesn't matter -- it could be a vigorous debate.

For example, imagine that you and I go back and forth on this conversation for 10 turns, then someone else shows up and says something. Neither you nor I respond again.

The pattern is clear: the new person killed the conversation. Prior to their joining, we were highly engaged. They joined, fin.

Actually, I'm not sure I mean sentiment analysis at all. Perhaps there's some of it. But there are obvious signals when conversations are healthy vs unhealthy. Sentiment analysis is not the point; it's *interaction pattern analysis* that is the point. You don't need sentiment for that.

(Ironically, MUDs solved this back in the 80s/90s, but Silicon Valley took their inspiration from chat rooms instead.)

Imagine a system like this that enforces physics-level constraints, rather than relying upon social conventions, the ability for humans to be self-aware and not selfish, and manual intervention.

We don't need this kind of moderation IRL. Why do we need it on social media?

Volunteer mods might tune parameters (what's the consequence threshold for this space?), not review every flagged post.

The labor doesn't scale well with message volume, but it scales with number of _spaces_, which grows much slower.

Consider: if FB groups or Bsky threads had physics that prevented randos from barging in, automatically detected conversation-killers, and let good-faith disagreements flourish while adding friction to bad-faith disruption... how great would that be?

Cloud shouldn't travel. Rep is local.

Under current platform rules, Elon's 200M followers mean his tweets about epidemiology carry the same weight as his tweets about rockets. That's INSANE.

With localized rep and clout that doesn't travel, you avoid that.

Similarly, at a restaurant you're in an "open space," but it's understood by social conventions that strangers can't just sit at your table and join your conversation. Karen in New Hampshire can't criticize your meal,... because she's not *present* to do so.

Ephemerality by default, so there's no "internet is forever" to haunt you.

Location has meaning and physics and norms imposes constraints. You can come to my house and hang in the common areas, but you can't go into my daughter's room. The door isn't locked, but it's still prohibited.

What if we had spaces with enforced identity? (You don't cook in a bathroom, you don't pee in an elevator.)

Add automatic sentiment analysis detecting thread health, not waiting for reports. Graduated consequences applied by the system (rate limits, posting friction) not human mods.

I have a theory about this. You're describing the symptom, not the disease. Moderation costs scale w/ content volume because *platforms treat content as the atomic unit.* Every post is potential evidence, every user is a potential violator.

What if we flip it? What if *presence* is the atomic unit?

Maybe unpopular opinion but SFF conventions should have way fewer panels and way more "somebody talks about something random and interesting for fifteen minutes"

Field of Dreams???

ella langley's music is catchy as hell but she has the stage presence of a potato

increasingly convinced that content as the atomic unit of social media was the original sin