“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.”  ― Tuli Kupferberg

Buzz buzz. You pull out your phone and see a text. Your heart drops. [Platform] Rules. Every sovereign individual's worst nightmare. Account suspended.

What do you do now? Create an alt? Write off the whole thing? After all you are on Nostr... but what if you weren't? Would Nostr actually solve anything for you right now?

These are important questions. We're all good zapping memes but when somebody gets deplatformed or content gets silenced it's important that uncensorable technologies can do the job.

Most people are familiar with fire alarms and extinguishers that say break glass in case of emergency. The glass helps solve a tragedy-of-commons issue by placing an important public good behind a messy and noisy barrier. Tech companies use the term break glass when they want to give low-level engineers access to powerful tools to solve an outage. That's why when Stuart Bowman used this term it seemed to fit so well:

Decentralized censorship resistance is like break glass in case of emergency.

Individuals should be able to break glass for their account suspensions and closures. Every day thousands of people find themselves in a position to try. In order for it to work, we must think deeply about how these scenarios play out and how relays, micro apps, mints, and the rest of this beautiful freedom tech can help. From reconnecting with followers to creating mirrors to account migration the possibilities seem endless.

Not to get too aspirational but if our break glass technologies work platforms may resign as censors and treat their positions and the rest of us with greater respect.