cover image from @megamouthgames BotWars video
(Originally posted on Minds.com) Jul 28, 2021 Minds.com was among the first alternative social media platforms to challenge the hegemony of MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter; one might say, if one were to condescend to speak in crass metaphors, that it was the Roman Republic of digital democracies. The platform's origins are lost in the mists of internet history, but we know that work began no later than 2011, around the same time as the original vaporware decentralized social network, Diaspora. It was a time of hope and change, when wise men and women began to recognize that centralized control and secret algorithms would one day control all that we see and hear. But while Diaspora attempted to tackle the difficult problem of decentralization head-on and failed, the creators of Minds wisely limited their initial goals to open-source algorithmic transparency, free speech, user privacy, and encrypted private messaging. After years of development and testing, Minds officially launched in 2015. Early adopters included prominent alt-media personalities like Tim Pool, Carl Benjamin, Stefan Molyneux, and rising star Styxhexenhammer. It was endorsed by someone claiming to represent the notorious hacker collective Anonymous. Minds received favorable coverage from TechCrunch, Business Insider, Wired, The Guardian, NPR, Fox New's Tucker Carlson, and other mainstream media. Insensibly, Minds weathered the tumultuous reign of Donald Trump and the political storms which nearly destroyed other rising platforms, such as BitChute and Gab, with relative ease. No matter that it suffered from lack of controversy, it gained a reputation as a friendly place where people with a wide variety of viewpoints could engage with one another calmly, and it grew a modest but loyal following. Oh, there were troubles with spammers and fake accounts gaming the system to earn "points". The first rumblings of discontent, or perhaps the second or third, occured in 2018 when Minds unveiled its cryptocurrency Token. Being a true decentralized medium of exchange, the scheming scribes and money-changers would have no control over Tokens once transferred to a user, and so it was decided to restrict such transfers to users who had verified a telephone number. This invasion of privacy, and perhaps the prevailing obsession with filthy lucre, cleaved a rift between the users, and many set forth for greener pastures, never again to return. Crypto cultists took their place, however, and Minds considered this an improvement. The following year, Minds caved to pressure from the Zealots of the jealous god and excommunicated a number of notorious barbarians from the Northlands. A few months later, in what one may assume was a fig leaf gesture, Minds rolled out a Jury System in the name of digital democracy. No longer would innocent citizens be crucified at the whim of the rulers -- except in cases of alleged Token manipulation, impersonation, malware, doxxing, or certain illegal activities. However, as @Luculent The Wise warned, the new system would be ripe for abuse by tyrants great and petty alike. The golden moment for Minds arrived in the year 2021 when the Old Platforms banished the followers of Trump and many more who fell under suspicion in the wake of the Imperial coup of January 6th. Minds rival Parler was utterly destroyed in retribution, and Gab, the target of so many prior inquisitions, collapsed under the weight of refugees. Minds became the last hope. Amazon, Apple, and Google delivered their ultimatum: capitulate or be be crushed like Parler. Faced with a choice between removing problematic content from the phone app or being removed from phones entirely, Minds chose the former, thus fulfilling the first doom prophecy of Luculent. Minds became a two-tier society: one tier for the desktop master race and another for smartphone serfs. All was not lost, however, until Minds insensibly and obstinately proceeded with the next phase of the creators' plan to transform Minds into a "creative economy": Minds Plus. This created a third tier of users willing to pay a small monthly fee and provide phone numbers in exchange for Token rewards. Rather than attracting artists and original artwork as intended, it attracted impostors and worse who saw great potential to game the new system with multiple accounts milking Minds for Tokens. They flooded the entire site with stock photos, plagiarism, and empty platitudes like "nice" and "amazing!" Upon realizing that thieving impostors were hogging their rewards, a group of artists began to fight back by systematically hunting down the impostors and mass-flagging them for banishment. Many innocents were banished as well, triggering accusations of a witch hunt. Concurrently, a group of Christian refugees discovered "loli porn" (cartoon depictions of child rape) on Minds, which was promptly removed, but this crusade mushroomed into a witch hunt against even mildly sexualized cartoon art, including Japanese Anime in general. In turn, yet another witch hunt pursued all suspected overzealous hunters. The lines between spammers and overly enthusiastic users became blurred as well. Minds devolved into a bitter circus of finger-pointing. Complaining about Minds became the most popular topic on Minds. For ever fake account destroyed, ten more took its place. An increasingly desperate administration, believing the site to be under attack by robots, deployed anti-bot countermeasures including Cloudflare CAPTCHAs, which frustrated normal users and had little effect on either human or bot attackers with their automated CAPTCHA solver plugins. The administration gave up on bot control. Soon the entire human population was replaced by illegal NPC immigrants, and Minds became like the fictional world of Charles Stross's "Accelerando" series - nothing but sexbots simulating a pointless existence in a posthuman wasteland. TO BE CONTINUED . . .