Mike Godwin’s law, coined while he was still a Law Student at the University of Texas, was that once Hitler is mentioned, an online conversation is effectively over.
After watching Twitter become even more right wing friendly after Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform in 2022 and closing off its open API, and communities leaving or shutting down after Reddit announced it would shut down its open API1, I’d like to suggest an updated version.
Once a privately owned, centralized platform closes its public APIs, the platform will invariably lose any usablity except for people who publicly or privately admire Hitler.
1. Corrected from ‘Reddit shut down’, as of this writing the API has not been shut down, but Reddit had announced plans to shut it down.