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Derek Beyer's avatar

Like many people, I am not especially eager to replace the conversation of neighbors and intellectuals with TikTok and Twitter as a general mode. My instinct is to say that it would be necessarily worse if you are correct that the Forum is becoming an institution. But once I consider the state and the market, I feel a bit better. We (arguably, inconsistently) agree that the state and the market should operate with laws and regulation. If the Forum is the third institution, the same must be true of it. If you can't murder your political opponents or sell heroin to children, we should be able to insist that you can't likewise create a exploitive business models in the attention economy.

Nathan Witkin's avatar

Yup agree completely. I anticipate that the next decade or so will see the creation of a more comprehensive regulatory framework to govern the forum - we're already seeing this with new social media regulation in Australia and soon elsewhere.

Reid Surmeier's avatar

Really loved this essay Nathan, thanks for taking the time to write this!

Nathan Witkin's avatar

Thanks Reid! Appreciate you taking the time to read it.

Kajetan Kwiatkowski's avatar

This was an awesome read. Love this interpretation of our chronically online culture

It sounds like there isn't so much a solution. Just that this may become the functional norm of discourse that connects all things.

Nathan Witkin's avatar

Hope not, but definitely seems like that's where we're headed.

TheBorys's avatar

No solution offered?