The Current Thing – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Interesting dissection of holding opposing ideas in a world with no marginal cost of supporting ideas, and then connecting that to policy or moderation decisions at different levels of the technology stack.

At the same time, I can’t help but worry about a world where every level of the Internet stack feels empowered to act based on political considerations, and it makes me think that my Framework for Moderation was wrong. In a world of idea aggregation the push to go along with the current thing is irresistible, making any sort of sober consideration of one’s position in the stack irrelevant. The only effective counter is a blanket policy of not censoring or cutting off service under any circumstance: it’s easier to appeal to consistency than it is to make a nuanced decision that runs counter to the current thing.

I share a very similar view to Thompson in regard to the layers in the stack and what moderation means. I actually do not see any issue introduced by companies blocking Russian access at an infrastructure level, as those decisions should be connected to state level sanctions.

In whole, the Internet should be as lightly moderated as possible, really only to legality, at the access layer (lowest) layers. And it is any companies decisions on what they want to do at the top user-facing (highest) layers.