Social platforms are not neutral

"For a while, social media tried to be politically neutral. Moderation is difficult as a practical task, and fighting over the decisions ... is bad business. But it was somewhat obvious to everyone that social platform neutrality was a performative fiction, even before Musk discarded the norm."

Whatever you do, social media can't be neutral: "Even an aggressively a-political stance is biased in some way... if it promotes influencers over friendships, or thirst traps over breaking news, then it still has a bias."

It follows from this that "they need to be interchangeable", like TV channels or cellphones, which "You can swap them without buying a new TV" or switching cell networks.

"The Internet is neutral. It's infrastructure... doesn't try to control where you go; it just gets you there. We depend neutral infrastructure to live free lives." Protocol-based social media is about "making the social platforms interchangeable to solve this neutrality problem".

Individual social apps or moderation algorithms on this infra can be opinionated, but they're interchangeable because the infra is neutral.