From 2006 to 2009 Twitter had few rules and almost no censorship. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z43xw3/the-history-of-twitters-rules

Until 2013 there was no "report abuse" button. Only the most serious violations were enforced.

From 2016 Twitter stopped being a mostly free speech platform. Censorship is now commonplace.

Censorship based on government request is now official Twitter policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter

Most world governments have pretty restrictive views on Free Speech. The USA with its 1st Amendment is exceptionally liberal. In most of the world, for most of history govts. have censored many types of speech.

The more relevant a platform becomes, the more users it has... the more dictators, tyrants and influence groups try to seize control or exert pressure on it.

If we really want to protect #FreeSpeech we need to create a platform which as #uncensorable as the Internet. A platform which cannot censor, even if its founders and owners want to. "Can't do Evil" > "Don't do Evil".

We cannot compromise on "reasonable restrictions" anymore. We canot trust that they will stay reasonable. In fact experience teaches us that they will almost certainly not.

We cannot pay attention to scaremongering about potential evil uses of #FreeSpeech. "Fighting terrorism" "Protecting children" are the usual excuses of censors and propagandists...

But we know for a fact, because we have lived it, that when #FreeSpeech reigns less than 1% of users use it for evil. Those few can be punished without restricting the rights of all.

In fact most misuse is not "evil"... 99% of undesirable content is just spam and can be dealt with by individual filtering and blocking.

So only 0.01% is straight out antisocial "evil" content that deserves to be condemned by all.

Should we sacrifice #FreeSpeech for all because of 0.01% of evil content?

This is an old question. An old debate.

The 1st Amendment was forged in the fires of this debate.

"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801.

The Jeffersonian pro #FreeSpeech position has always been the minority position. Most of the world rejects it. Every generation the 1st Amendment in the US comes under fierce attack.

But for those who believe the world is a better place with #FreeSpeech now we have a chance to win a big fight against the censors...

It should not be difficult now to create a Twitter clone based on a Bittorrent infrastructure. It could be an open source project or even a DAO.

System requirements for a text-only messaging platform would be incredibly low. With today's bandwidth it should be trivial.

The need for an #uncensorable social network might not seem so dire in western countries, but in much of the world it is desperate.

If we build this now, we will not just be doing a great good to much of the world, we will be building insurance for ourselves.

Don't think that censorship won't happen here... it is already happening, increasingly so.