[malvosenior]

I don't think "regular people" are concerned about being harmed on social media. The story around abuse comes from very high profile people that receive the social media equivalent of what we used to call hate mail.

When a regular person signs up to Twitter they don't even get any followers let alone harassment. Abuse only happens when you reach a suitably large audience to enable it. Most people will never have that kind of attention.

I think centralization's domination in tech is due mostly to technical and business reasons. Centralized search is fast, centralized content is fast and high quality, discovery is easier...

[notriddle]

Not "abuse" as in "targeted bullying". Abuse" as in "untargeted spam".

Just look at what happened to IRC. And Usenet. And Email. Heck, even the Fediverse. The major providers colluded in the form of de-facto network-wide blacklists as a way to counter spam, ultimately centralizing control of the network. People stick to the major providers that participate in the blacklist because, while a few people will occasionally be unjustly kicked out, most of the time it actually works pretty well and the major providers aren't flooded with garbage.

[malvosenior]

I took the "safer" in the OP to mean harassment but totally agree with you on your point. It goes to what I was saying about centralization offering better technical advantages.

[rspeer]

Even if you don't personally see the benefit of a platform having a way to stop hate speech and harassment (we can all agree on the value of stopping spam at least), you still have the problem that a platform that allows hate speech and harassment will self-select for horrible users who aren't allowed on the major platforms. It'll be a wasteland of garbage, like 8chan, Gab or Voat.

Notice that you're currently expressing yourself on the actively-moderated HN, not on one of those.