It happened fast, but an hour ago I got a Twitter DM from @paul who had just had a phone call with a TechCrunch reporter about decentralization and the recent events in the US and cyberspace. Paul indicated me to this reporter, and 15min ago I had a video call with the reporter about decentralization, moderation, and centralized platforms. I think it went well! I hope it makes a good article. I'll let you all know about it when it comes out.

What were they asking, what was the article they wanted to write about.
What did you say about values and politics?

@mixmix @Johan The reporter was https://twitter.com/lucasmtny and I find it hard to tell here all the things he asked and how I answered, partially because I don't remember precisely all the questions, and partially because I don't have time (very busy week). Roughly, the questions were along the lines (probably none of these were exactly phrased like this): "what are you working on, how does moderation work in decentralized spaces, are you worried about bad actors utilizing your decentralized solutions, is there anything the centralized platforms did in the past 4 years that was a good idea towards moderation?". And my answers were roughly similar to what I've been tweeting in the past 7 days.

If I understood correctly, the article is out now: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/15/twitters-vision-of-decentralization-could-also-be-the-far-rights-internet-endgame/

And it seems to be a big pivot, neither @paul nor I are featured, instead, bluesky, @emmi bevensee, and @Rabble are highlighted. I think Twitter's CEO's recent tweet thread about Trump's ban and bluesky probably required the article to be changed drastically.

Well, it's still a decent article, I just feel like I wasted 30min of my life on that interview. But hey, we have scuttlebutt mentioned on TechCrunch now.

Scuttlebutt mention was a win nonetheless.

The article itself though is BS.

I got connected to the author from @paul and sent him on to a few folks like @emmi bevensee. I agree @andrestaltz that it started out as a decentralized social media article which morphed in to one about bluesky. Sorry that manyverse didn't get mentioned, i find I get interviewed a lot and what i say just gets used as background by the journalist. They've got their story and they use what you say based on how much it helps advance their story.

The author did seem open to the idea of writing about scuttlebutt in a separate article.

I think the big thing we're missing about bluesky is that initially there was a ton of interest and focus from the blockchain community and the project has not gone in the direction of #web3 instead it's very much a #dweb project.