As financial currencies evolve toward decentralization, speech and social currencies have been evolving toward centralization

Biden built a censorship industry, but the demand for it had been building well before him.

It had become clear even in 2020 — well before the Biden administration came in — that much of media, politicians, public policy “experts,” intellectuals, and the populace were agitating for censoring “misinformation,” and demanding “something be done” about all the “deniers” on social media.

So, while there has been a rise over the last decade in decentralized currencies (i.e., cryptocurrency), and a broader understanding of its importance, free expression has been moving in the opposite direction: from inherently decentralized to centralized fact checkers.

In this November 2020 video, my third video in the endless Covid season, I talk about this bizarre contrast between the evolution of financial versus social currencies (and see this \_oofWIRED piece for how they’re highly analogous).