What's Wrong With Social Media? Vitalik Buterin Responds to Former Reddit CEO

Cover image via u.today Read U.TODAY on Google News Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin: Adversarial interoperability is what social media needs Era of decentralized social media platforms yet to come Advertisement Alternative client implementations of popular social media services can solve the problems of "AI dystopia," Ethereum (ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin says in discussion with Yishan Wong, Reddit CEO in 2012-2014. These alt clients might even be monetized due to high demand for such solutions, Vitalik opines. Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin: Adversarial interoperability is what social media needs The only problem with making social media AI-free and human-only is that the entire space lacks proper competition. "Adversarial interoperability," i.e., launching alternative client implementations with strict anti-bot policies would help here, Ethereum (ETH) cofounder Vitalik Buterin says. Given that there's such high demand for it, this seems like the sort of thing that individual social media platforms could do without needing any agreement, no? In which case, the problem is that social media is not competitive enough. So the _real_ institutional problem is… HOT Stories Morning Crypto Report: Bitcoin Briefly Hits Abnormal $24,111 on Binance, -26% for XRP: New Death Cross Price Prediction, Cardano (ADA) Has Bullish Chance for January Ripple Could Have Sold as Much XRP as It Wanted, CTO Says Crypto Market Prediction: Will Ethereum's (ETH) Christmas Be Bullish? Bitcoin (BTC) Hides Its Real Power, Did XRP Just End 160-Day Bloodbath? Race to $5,000: Gold Takes Massive Lead Over ETH — vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 25, 2025 This suggestion was Buterin's response to a statement by Yishan Wong, American engineer, founder of Terraformation and former CEO of Reddit. Wong ran the "front page of the Internet" in 2012-2014. Advertisement Wong stressed that the entire segment of social media platforms should be free from AI and similar technologies since humans are congregating here. Every violation of the "human-only" rules of social media should be punished with draconian enforcement. Buterin proposed that alternative, community-centric clients should be running "in the face" of the original platforms trying to block it. Technically, they can leverage the APIs of existing social media — like Twitter API or Meta API — and even use LLMs to avoid being prevented from fetching the data from the API endpoints. Advertisement Era of decentralized social media platforms yet to come This will not be an easy task, as the Terms of Service of modern social media platforms would even make the potential platforms behind such alternative clients seek "better jurisdictions." At the same time, the demand for "human-only" media platforms is, in reality, so high that their owners might charge around $30 per month for such experiences. Vitalik Buterin is a long-term advocate of the decentralized social media concept. As covered by U.Today previously, he stressed that Farcaster is almost ready to be as usable as Twitter. You Might Also Like Fri, 02/16/2024 - 11:20 Vitalik Buterin Has Complimented New Decentralized Social Network By Arman Shirinyan At the same time, a viable monetization model for such services is yet to be found. In November 2025, Farcaster's Dan Romero announced that the protocol pivots to "wallet-first" experiences instead of a social media model. #Reddit News