I think eventually market forces will take over in this situation, just like they did with tv, radio, newspapers. Twitter especially, but other big platforms have now taken sides and have lost all trust with the "right". It's only a matter of time before they get "unbundled" from a political angle, Parler is a perfect example.
You can't have moderation free platforms because there are a lot of profane an wierd people. Platforms will need to pick which side they are on, and cater to those users. Just like TV channels, newspapers etc have all picked between left and right.
For TV and radio there’s a finite resource (radio spectrum) which is then allocated by government permission. OTOH, it’s much easier to set up a website and publish some content or even host conversations, than it is to set up a TV station. So the finality of the state you describe seems far from obvious — determined folks (a minority) will likely have the opportunity to opt out. It’s a different matter whether the same “ease of forking” which allows new platforms also promotes fragmentation. Maybe people learn to value community enough that some of these niche platforms coalesce to coexist & flourish.
To have fruitful interactions does not require the platform to have “scale”. And over you take away scale, most of the problems afflicting these platforms also goes away; they are problems of our own making.
Speech on Facebook and Twitter has been unmoderated (aside from illegal stuff) for a long time. Why can't people just stop demanding deletion when they see views they dislike and do something else about it instead?
Couldn't Facebook just put more effort into giving users the power to filter content on their own? They have an interactive, infinitely flexible medium, tons of money and some of the brightest people in the world working there. Perhaps they could do a little better than cable TV?
You can't have moderation free platforms because there are a lot of profane an wierd people. Platforms will need to pick which side they are on, and cater to those users. Just like TV channels, newspapers etc have all picked between left and right.