Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School has begun its reign over the decentralized social platform Farcaster. Its first order of enterprise? An obvious wave of bans that has prompted backlash from members of the decentralized social community.
Network School on Thursday introduced it has acquired Farcaster from Neynar, rebranding it because the Network State Protocol. The identical day, a number of customers stated on X that their Farcaster accounts had been restricted to “read-only,” because of earlier posts that broke its new guidelines.
“I know most of these folks. They shaped Farcaster with their quirks and wit,” stated Kunal Gandhi, former India ecosystem lead at Eigen Labs. “Obliterating accounts from the get-go for past posts is pretty silly. Goes against the ethos of decentralized social.”
The overhaul is the most recent try to discover a sustainable route for Farcaster, which is altering fingers for the second time this yr. Co-founder Dan Romero stated the platform had 250,000 month-to-month energetic customers in December 2025.
Balaji desires the ‘Singapore of social media’
In a submit to Farcaster on Thursday, Srinivasan stated the bans have been a part of plans to show the reference app into “the Singapore of social media,” a positive-sum neighborhood of techno-optimists that function underneath a shared code of conduct.
One of the primary steps was to institute “law and order,” he stated. “In the pre-Internet world, it was simply unheard of to run up to a stranger and start cursing at them. We’re restoring that offline norm online.”
“Much like how President Bukele jailed a small fraction of repeat offenders to essentially eliminate crime in El Salvador, we’ve moderated out the small fraction of repeat offenders that have been muted or blocked by many accounts to stop random attacks within this Farcaster reference client.”
Srinivasan stated each people and AI have been used to undergo hundreds of thousands of posts to find out these to ban, including there’s an appeals course of in place for them.
Rewarding “pro-social behavior”
Under Network School’s imaginative and prescient for Network State Protocol, customers decide right into a “social smart contract” authorizing its core group to set the app’s guidelines. Its accompanying “Network Code” classifies violations as digital felonies, misdemeanors or infractions, with penalties starting from warnings and suspensions to bans. The guidelines apply to previous posts in addition to new ones.
The code additionally guarantees rewards for constructive conduct, together with educating others, sharing initiatives and disagreeing civilly, though it doesn’t specify what these rewards entail.
Related: Farcaster to return $180M to buyers following Neynar takeover
Network School says an open-weight AI mannequin will apply the foundations, with some guide judgment calls, and ultimately desires to warn customers of potential violations earlier than they submit.
The underlying Farcaster protocol will stay open, in response to the announcement. Users who decline the contract can have read-only entry to the primary app however retain their keys, funds, followers and submit historical past, permitting them to maneuver to a different consumer. Srinivasan described this potential to affix, go away or construct competing shoppers as “decentralized democracy.”
The eventual ambition extends past social media. Network School stated its objective is for the web neighborhood to take bodily kind by meetups and pop-up occasions, finally creating into startup cities and community states.
Network School’s acquisition of Farcaster comes months after Malaysian authorities revoked its Forest City enterprise licence and ordered it to stop operations, citing alleged licensing and premises-use violations. Srinivasan subsequently introduced an settlement to determine a campus in Kazakhstan.
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Content Source: cointelegraph.com
