The Future of Online Community: Lessons from "State of the World 2025"
"Here in this peculiar, stony, damp but time-honored venue, we can still make our yearly effort to sip from the aquifer and get our heads on straight" — Bruce Sterling, State of the World 2025
Introduction: A Tradition of Reflection
Every year, as the calendar turns, I return to a familiar intellectual gathering place: State of the World, the annual conversation hosted on The WELL. Now in its 25th year, this discussion, led by Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky, is far more than an analysis of global events. It is a ritual of perspective, a way to step outside the noise of day-to-day discourse and reflect on deeper patterns shaping our world.
The WELL, one of the oldest, continuously operating online communities, embodies the kind of digital space I have long championed—one that elevates the importance of long-form dialogue, community resilience, and intellectual integrity. As a strategist and architect for online communities, I find in State of the World an highly useful benchmark: Are online spaces still capable of nurturing meaningful engagement? Can they still function as engines of insight rather than outrage? Each year, the discussion presents a new lens through which to examine my own practice, and 2025’s conversation offered some of the most pressing insights yet.
1. The Crisis of Trust: Why Online Communities Must Become the New Information Commons
"How can we build communities that work to mitigate polarization and conflict? For the last 35 years, I've been part of a successful online community called The WELL...It's not that there is no conflict in a community like the WELL, but that conflict occurs within a sense of coherent community, often resolved through ongoing conversation and sharing of perspective as members of the community build a history together" — Jon Lebkowsky
A dominant theme in this year’s discussion was the ongoing erosion of trust in digital platforms and institutions. With major networks abandoning fact-checking and misinformation flourishing, there is a widespread sense that public discourse has become unmoored from credibility. The WELL, by contrast, remains a rare enclave where conversational trust is actively maintained—not through algorithms, but through cultural norms and human moderation.
This underscores a major challenge for online community builders: How do we design for trust in an era of digital disillusionment?
Key Takeaways for Community Architects:
Moderation as Curation: Communities must shift from reactive moderation to proactive curation, where quality, not quantity, is the guiding principle.
Community-Led Verification: Instead of relying on top-down enforcement, platforms might enable peer-based credibility signals, rewarding constructive contributions over sheer engagement. To be clear, this isn’t a call for the abandonment of responsibility for active moderation.
Decentralized Governance: As institutions falter, the best communities will be those that involve members in decision-making, fostering a shared sense of responsibility and with it a greater celebration of outcomes.
2. Escaping Tribalism: Designing Communities That Encourage Critical Thinking
"Can we redesign our digital spaces to prioritize human values over profit, thereby enhancing our collective resilience and bridging divides?" — Cory Doctorow, Koert Van Mensvoort
One of the liveliest points of contention in the State of the World 2025 discussion was whether online communities inevitably descend into ideological echo chambers. Some participants argued that today’s digital tribalism is merely an extension of human nature. Others insisted that platform design plays a decisive role in either mitigating or exacerbating division.
I align with the latter view. The WELL, unlike most social networks, rewards depth over virality—a direct result of its forum-style structure and long-form discussion culture. This is not an accident; it is an intentional design choice that shapes the quality of discourse. Both for-profit and nonprofit organizations with online communities would benefit from an assessment of how their community platform choice has an impact on the kinds of interactions that will be emphasized. Fortunately, most of the community platforms for creators, enterprises, and organizations tend to emphasize the most recent and most liked posts and have avoided the worst extractive behaviors of the big social media platforms like Meta and X.
Key Takeaways for Community Architects:
Move Beyond Algorithmic Amplification: Platforms that prioritize “engagement” at all costs tend to amplify outrage and extremism. Instead, content discovery should be member-curated, encouraging thoughtful exchanges over performative conflict.
Create Discourse Zones for Constructive Debate: Instead of suppressing disagreement, communities should establish explicit spaces where conflicting viewpoints are welcomed and structured for productive engagement.
Facilitate, Don’t Dominate: Moderators (and community advocates) should act as guides rather than gatekeepers, modeling thoughtful discourse rather than merely enforcing rules.
3. The Coming Climate of Displacement: Online Communities as Resilience Networks
"Ideally when there's a world-threatening crisis, the finest scientific minds would be called together to find a solution. But with climate change, the crisis has been politicized with substantial weight given to a denial that any crisis exists" — Jon Lebkowsky
One of the most sobering discussions during the State of the World 2025 centered on the mass displacement that climate change will trigger. If 2023 saw migration crises driven by war and political instability, the coming decades will see unprecedented population movements caused by environmental collapse.
The role of online communities in this future cannot be merely recreational or commercial—they must serve as lifelines for displaced populations, knowledge-sharing networks for adaptation, and alternative economic ecosystems.
Key Takeaways for Community Architects:
Develop Mutual Aid Networks: Future online communities must extend beyond discussion forums to enable real-world resource sharing and crisis response.
Hybrid Digital-Physical Models: As displacement increases, communities must bridge online and offline support structures, connecting members with reliable networks for relocation, employment, and security.
Prepare for Governance Challenges: As climate-driven migration accelerates, online communities may inherit governance responsibilities once handled by nation-states—including conflict resolution, economic coordination, and social trust-building.
4. The AI Dilemma: Can Online Communities Integrate AI Without Losing Authenticity?
“I've always thought it's bogus to think that AIs can replicate the still-kinda-mysterious operations of human brains and consciousness." — Jon Lebkowsky
As AI-generated content becomes increasingly indistinguishable from human conversation, communities face a profound dilemma: How do we integrate AI tools without compromising authenticity? Some participants on the WELL viewed AI-generated interactions as just another layer of digital noise, while others saw potential for AI-assisted curation and accessibility.
Key Takeaways for Community Architects:
Use AI for Context, Not Conversation: AI should enhance human discussion by summarizing debates, improving searchability, and providing context—not by replacing organic interaction.
Transparency is Critical: AI-generated content must be clearly labeled, ensuring users always know whether they are engaging with a person or an algorithm.
AI Moderation Must Be Accountable: While AI can assist in detecting harmful content, human judgment must always have the final say in moderation decisions.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Digital Commons
The State of the World 2025 discussion reinforced my belief that online communities are at an inflection point. We can continue down a path where communities become commodified, exploitative, and engagement-driven, or we can reclaim them as ethical, knowledge-driven, and trust-based spaces.
For those of us working at the frontier of community design, the choice is clear: We must design for depth, trust, and resilience, rather than virality and profit. Only then will we ensure that online communities remain worth belonging to in the decades ahead.
This article was created in collaboration with ChatGPT and NotebookLM for structure and editing. Research and relevant links were supplemented by Perplexity AI.
