Welcome to the Decentralizers Forum!

I already have a vocation (full-time day-job) and a primary avocation (nights and weekends) and am here mostly to read what thought-leaders (Larry's peers) are saying; I'm here to listen. Just signed up. Populating a Twitter list, Decentralizers, using public information. But if you wish to opt out just let me know. FWIW, this forum is related to a tag I use in tweets: tbch0409a.

Thanks for initiating this, Larry. Sure feels like we are heading for a Chinese social credit system, much more rapidly than any of us thought. I figured we had another 10 years. They are laying the groundwork at record speed, and the silencing of dissent and making it difficult to travel and form groups is getting scary.

I've been thinking about things like this threads topic and I've come to the conclusion (my opinion) the most efficient and quickest way that we could solve many of our nations problems (including this one), is removing gerrymandering would solve many of our problems by removing the extreme partisan members of Congress.  This in turn would trickle down solutions to most of our other major issues. Only allow voting districts to be basic natural shapes, no spaghetti districts allowed.

Hi there. I have over 25 years experience in IT programming, cyber security, security architecture and enterprise architecture for large scale solutions. Looking to see how I might be able to help out. 

I’ve been in the digital business since the 70’s, most of which was not in web development, so I’m an amateur with this. I’ve been thinking about this issue for maybe a year, but never did any real work on the issue. I’m now recently retired, so I have some time that I can spend. 

I hope this forum stays away from specific political issues of the day. Not that I’m uninterested, or I believe politics is irrelevant, but because this is a big technical issue, and will take every bit of talent and effort we can muster to pull it off. We shouldn’t waste time with outside subjects that would be a distraction.

Also hopefully we wind up with a standard that can be implemented, rather than a product to be marketed. In the end, this thing may be a hard, or impossible thing to monetize, which may be its Achilles heel, but also the thing that will keep it free and independent.

Everyone—sorry, but it somehow, I really have no idea how, a bunch of accounts on this WordPress site were deleted.

That is why you see "Anonymous" so much, above. I'm very sorry...please re-create your account! You should be able to do so. One person complained (understandably) and we determined that his account is simply gone, period.

Is there anyone good at WordPress who might have insight into why these accounts disappeared?

I'm not anyone special, I suppose - just someone who fears for the future in the wake of the first week or two of 2021. A mob storming the Capitol Building doesn't bother me anywhere near as much as the wholesale censorship enacted by Google, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. I'm left wondering what practical steps I can take, as a user, to diminish my use of their tools. I use Facebook and Google, not Twitter...haven't dealt with Apple for years, and like most people buy things from Amazon. Just uninstalled Chrome and started using Firefox, I think I'll cancel my Facebook account - but it's a nice venue to keep in touch with people. Nobody I know is on MeWe; church is even broadcast on Facebook in these times of COVID. What are the solutions, the alternatives? How can we destroy the influence these juggernauts exercise over the web? What other tools out there are as easy-to-use? Where else can I buy digital books, if not from Amazon? I don't have answers but I'm hoping I'll find some solutions here or elsewhere.