"And the adults who had set up Communitree were horrified, because they were being overrun by these students. The place that was founded on open access had too much open access, too much openness. They couldn’t defend themselves against their own users. The place that was founded on free speech had too much freedom. They had no way of saying, “No, that’s not the kind of free speech we meant.” But that was a requirement. In order to defend themselves against being overrun, that was something that they needed to have that they didn’t have, and in the end, they simply shut the site down."
1. Designing Social software is as different from UX design as UX is from bare functionality.
2. Tech groups are not immune from using “vilification of external enemies” to increase group cohesion, where enemies included Microsoft in the 90s, it’s probably surveillance capitalism today.
3. Unrestrained social software can lead to constitutional crisis: the tension between individuals and group, the rights and responsibilities of each, what’s the social contract for an online community? That’s more political science than computer science.
I've seen this before with Usenet groups that got too bogged down with infighting and trolls, so splinter groups formed off on handmade vBulletin/phpbb sites or wherever.
They always imploded shortly afterward. A safe space eventually falls to the same splintering, just in more fractal detail.
Some of them survive the implosion and come out of the wreckage in okay condition, but a lot never come back.
Clay called it right, 17 years ago. https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit...