I think that the nature of modern social media platforms make this kind of moral panic It has some properties that make this kind of constant moral panic seem inevitable.

• Huge centralized platforms: they push groups of people together that have core ideological differences. Don’t get me wrong, it’s healthy and beneficial for all to be exposed to beliefs, have their current set of beliefs challenged, so everyone can grow and learn from each other. But a constant barrage of critiques, callouts, challenges, etc hurts more than it helps. There need to be safe harbors so folks can just chill.

• Engagement at all costs: Social media companies participate in the attention economy, where they make money proportional to the time people spend on the platform. Companies have to fight for your attention in order to survive. And the best way to do that happens to be through fear and anger. Bird app is incentivized to push callouts to the top of the feed.

I’m hopeful that federated communities won’t have as much moral puritanism as the big platforms of today.