Many existing communication protocols and platform architectures are built on implicit classical worldviews or moral assumptions that become encoded into their foundational design. These may include assumptions about identity (e.g., real-name policies), trust (e.g., reliance on centralized authorities), legitimacy (e.g., content moderation norms), or truth (e.g., algorithmic ranking of “authoritative” sources). While often well-intentioned, these embedded axioms inevitably reflect the values, norms, and power structures of their creators—leading to systems that enforce a particular worldview or authority dynamic. As a result, they tend to privilege certain actors—institutions, governments, corporations—while marginalizing others, particularly those with alternative perspectives, identities, or epistemologies.

This bias is not necessarily the product of malice; rather, it stems from starting at the wrong level of abstraction. When systems begin with assumptions about what is good, true, or acceptable, they lose neutrality and inevitably shape discourse to reflect those assumptions. To address this, one must dig deeper—beneath cultural norms, institutional paradigms, and even classical notions of reality—to identify more fundamental axioms: authorship, intention, uniqueness, and accountability. By anchoring protocol design in these deeper, morally neutral principles, it becomes possible to build communication systems that do not encode hierarchy or ideology, but instead empower all agents equally to express themselves, verify one another, and construct social meaning on their own terms. This shift doesn’t eliminate disagreement or conflict, but it does eliminate the structural inequities imposed by systems that quietly take sides from the start.