Balaji's 'Singapore of social media' begins with a wave of bans
Network School, the venture founded by investor and author Balaji Srinivasan, has formally taken control of the decentralized social platform Farcaster and moved quickly to impose a new code of conduct. The acquisition from Neynar was announced on Thursday, alongside a rebranding of the reference app as the Network State Protocol. Within hours, users began reporting that their accounts had been restricted to read-only mode, with the new owners citing past posts that violated its rules.
The immediate crackdown has triggered criticism from members of the decentralized social network, who argue that retroactive moderation undermines the values of portability, open access and user sovereignty that Farcaster was built to promote. The company says the restrictions are part of a broader effort to turn the app into what Srinivasan calls the 'Singapore of social media' - a positive-sum community of techno-optimists governed by a shared code of conduct.
Key facts
- Network School acquired Farcaster from Neynar and rebranded the reference app as the Network State Protocol.
- Several users said their accounts were restricted to read-only mode because of prior posts that broke new rules.
- Balaji Srinivasan described the goal as building the 'Singapore of social media' for well-mannered techno-optimists.
- The company said it used humans and AI to review millions of posts and identify a small fraction of repeat offenders.
- An appeals process is in place for affected accounts, according to Srinivasan.
- Users must opt into a 'social smart contract' that authorizes the core team to set rules for the app.
- The accompanying Network Code classifies violations as digital felonies, misdemeanors or infractions and applies to past and new posts.
- Penalties range from warnings and suspensions to bans, while constructive behavior is supposed to earn unspecified rewards.
- The underlying Farcaster protocol remains open, and users who decline the contract can keep keys, funds, followers and post history while moving to another client.
- Network School says its long-term ambition is to create meetups, pop-up events, startup cities and network states.
A takeover and an immediate crackdown
The speed of the restrictions surprised many Farcaster users. The platform has long positioned itself as a decentralized alternative to mainstream social media, with an open protocol that lets different clients compete and lets users carry their identity and social graph across services. That architecture was supposed to make arbitrary censorship difficult, or at least costly, because a user could exit one client and move to another. Network School's first moves suggest that the reference client - the main doorway into the network for most users - can still exercise significant control over who speaks and how.
The company has framed the restrictions as housekeeping rather than censorship. Srinivasan said the platform needed 'law and order' before it could become a welcoming place for builders, investors and techno-optimists. He argued that the pre-internet world had clear social norms against running up to strangers and cursing at them, and that the new rules are an attempt to restore those norms online. The comparison he chose was striking: he likened the moderation effort to President Nayib Bukele's mass incarceration campaign in El Salvador, saying Network School had moderated out a small fraction of repeat offenders who had been muted or blocked by many accounts.
That analogy is likely to intensify the debate. Supporters of strong moderation see it as a practical way to reduce harassment and make online communities usable. Critics see it as a top-down, punitive approach that treats social friction as a policing problem. On Farcaster, the dispute is especially charged because the platform's identity has been tied to decentralization. A ban that reaches back into a user's post history feels different from a forward-looking rule change, because it can invalidate years of participation without a new act.
Balaji's Singapore metaphor
Srinivasan's 'Singapore of social media' phrase captures both the promise and the tension in his plan. Singapore is often cited for its order, safety, economic openness and high-trust institutions. It is also known for strict rules, paternalistic governance and limits on expression. By invoking the city-state, Srinivasan signals that he wants a community with strong norms, low tolerance for antisocial behavior and a shared belief in technology as a force for progress. The phrase also implies a kind of social engineering: a carefully designed environment where the right rules attract the right people and push out the wrong ones.
The techno-optimist label is important. Network School is not merely trying to run a social app. It is trying to build a community of people who share a worldview - one in which technology, markets and voluntary cooperation can solve problems that governments handle poorly. Farcaster is meant to be a digital front door to that community, a place where founders, researchers, artists and investors can meet, share projects and debate ideas. The code of conduct is therefore not just a moderation policy. It is a constitutional document for a would-be network state, setting out what counts as good citizenship and what counts as a digital crime.
The Network Code and social smart contract
Under Network School's vision, users opt into a 'social smart contract' that authorizes the core team to set the app's rules. The accompanying Network Code classifies violations as digital felonies, misdemeanors or infractions. Penalties range from warnings and suspensions to outright bans. Crucially, the rules apply to past posts as well as new ones, which is why the first wave of enforcement has focused on old content. The code also promises rewards for constructive behavior, including teaching others, sharing projects and disagreeing civilly, although it does not specify what those rewards will be.
The contract structure is an attempt to square centralized enforcement with decentralized rhetoric. Users who accept the contract get access to the main app and its features. Users who decline can still access the main app in read-only mode and retain their keys, funds, followers and post history, allowing them to move to another client. Srinivasan has described the ability to join, leave or build competing clients as 'decentralized democracy.' That is a real form of exit rights, but it is not the same as permissionless speech. The reference client can still set the terms of its own community, and for many users the cost of leaving - lost network effects, fewer interlocutors, a smaller audience - may be high.
The Network Code's language borrows from criminal law, which is unusual for a social media platform. Felonies, misdemeanors and infractions carry connotations of a state, a court system and a monopoly on legitimate violence. A private app can enforce rules, but it cannot imprison anyone. The penal vocabulary is likely meant to signal seriousness, but it also invites comparisons to authoritarian governance. That may be exactly the debate Srinivasan wants: a fight over whether online communities need stronger institutions or whether they should remain loose, messy and open.
Appeals, AI moderation and exit rights
Network School says an open-weight AI model will apply the rules, with some manual judgment calls. It also wants to eventually warn users of potential violations before they post, a feature that would shift moderation from punishment to prevention. The company said both humans and AI were used to review millions of posts and determine which accounts to restrict. That scale helps explain how a small team could act so quickly, but it also raises questions about accuracy, bias and accountability. An appeals process exists, but its details, timelines and independence have not been fully spelled out.
The use of open-weight models is consistent with the network-state ethos: prefer tools that can be inspected, copied and run by many communities. Yet even a transparent model needs a human institution to interpret its outputs and decide on penalties. The core team's judgment remains central. The promise of future warnings is an admission that retroactive enforcement is blunt. It may also be an attempt to move the conversation from bans to prevention, from punishment to design. Whether users trust that shift will depend on how consistently the rules are applied and how quickly appeals are resolved.
The exit option is the strongest defense of the model. Because Farcaster's underlying protocol remains open, a user who rejects the contract can keep their identity, funds, followers and post history, then move to another client. In theory, that preserves the core benefit of decentralized social media: the ability to leave without losing your social capital. In practice, the main client's network effects are powerful. A user who moves to a smaller client may find fewer conversations and less visibility. Exit rights are meaningful, but they are not costless.
Backlash from decentralized social advocates
The backlash has been led by users who see Farcaster as a refuge from the arbitrary rule-making of large platforms. Kunal Gandhi, a former India ecosystem lead at Eigen Labs, said he knew many of the affected users and argued that removing accounts from the start for past posts was silly and against the ethos of decentralized social. That reaction captures the core tension: a platform that markets itself as decentralized cannot easily adopt the habits of a centralized censor without losing credibility among its most committed users.
Some critics may accept that a client can set rules. The objection is more specific: retroactive enforcement, penal language and a comparison to mass incarceration signal a style of governance that feels at odds with the culture of open-source communities. Decentralized social media has always been a mix of ideals and practical compromise. The protocol may be open, but the clients, interfaces and discovery algorithms shape behavior. Network School is now testing how much control a determined owner can exert over the reference experience before users decide that the costs of leaving are worth paying.
There is also a philosophical question about what counts as a community. If Farcaster is a public square, then strict house rules may look like private property management. If it is a club, then members can be expelled for breaking club rules. Srinivasan seems to want both: the openness and portability of a public protocol, and the high-trust norms of a private club. The Network Code is an attempt to have the second without sacrificing the first. The first wave of bans shows how difficult that balance is to maintain.
Farcaster's turbulent year and business context
The overhaul is the latest attempt to find a sustainable direction for Farcaster, which is changing hands for the second time this year. Co-founder Dan Romero said the platform had 250,000 monthly active users in December 2025. That is a meaningful base for a decentralized social app, but it is small compared with mainstream platforms. The earlier Neynar takeover was accompanied by reports that Farcaster would return $180 million to investors, a sign of how much capital had been deployed relative to the user base. The new owners now face the same challenge: how to grow the network without diluting the culture that made it distinctive.
Social media is a difficult business even when it is centralized. Advertising, subscriptions and token-based incentives each create different pressures. A decentralized protocol adds another layer of complexity because the core team does not fully control the clients or the users. Network School's answer is to build a stronger community with clearer rules and a shared mission. That may attract a certain kind of user - founders, builders, investors and ideologically motivated technologists - while repelling others. The risk is that the community becomes too narrow to sustain the network effects that make social products useful.
The $180 million return to investors also highlights the financial stakes. Venture-backed social platforms need to show growth or a path to profitability. A smaller, high-trust community can be valuable, but it may not support the valuations that investors expect. Network School's strategy appears to be to pair the app with a broader movement: meetups, events, educational programs and eventually physical communities. If the digital network can feed the physical network and vice versa, the whole project may be more durable than a standalone social app. If not, the app may remain a niche forum for a committed subculture.
From Forest City to Kazakhstan
Network School's acquisition of Farcaster comes months after Malaysian authorities revoked its Forest City business licence and ordered it to cease operations, citing alleged licensing and premises-use violations. Srinivasan subsequently announced an agreement to establish a campus in Kazakhstan. The sequence matters because it shows how quickly the project's physical plans can change. A network state needs territory, or at least friendly jurisdictions, and those relationships can be fragile. The digital network is in some ways more controllable than the physical one, but it also depends on the same reputation for competence and good faith.
The ambition extends beyond social media. Network School says its goal is for the online community to take physical form through meetups and pop-up events, ultimately developing into startup cities and network states. That is a long way from a moderation policy for a Farcaster client. Yet the two are connected. A network state needs members who trust each other, shared norms and institutions that can resolve disputes. The Network Code is a first draft of those institutions, and
Source:Cointelegraph News