My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network • Hacker News Board

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#71

Post by vorpalhex » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #45

grahamburger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is why federation is an important aspect of decentralized networks, and is commonly listed as a reason for use Mastodon / the fediverse. Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Notably mastodon.social and the instances related to it haven't become cess pools of hate speech, because they do have strong moderation policies, but for users w…

> Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Yeah, this is why the fediverse is terrible, too. Your site admin shouldn't be the one deciding who you can DM, or which people can follow your feed. Imagine if email worked that way.

That's a feature many users want. Plenty of users never want to see things they disagree with or take objection to, and want to have someone else enforce that pattern.

As long as it's optional - and in the fediverse design it is - then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. Whether or not those instances actually survive and have any users or just immediately collapse into internal bickering is beyond the strict scope.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#72

Post by zozbot234 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

notJim wrote: post #60

grahamburger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is why federation is an important aspect of decentralized networks, and is commonly listed as a reason for use Mastodon / the fediverse. Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Notably mastodon.social and the instances related to it haven't become cess pools of hate speech, because they do have strong moderation policies, but for users w…

Any idea why Parler took off rather than a right-wing instance of Mastodon? Is it about framing?

Isn't Gab exactly that? They seem to have "taken off" quite successfully among their own audience. Parler simply made a different choice wrt. whether to support interop and federation.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#73

Post by slg » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

I agree with this article that a social network without moderation is worthless. However what this describes is not moderation, it is filtering. There needs to be some form of moderation.

Imagine a scenario in which a revenge porn image is posted to the site. Is the victim's primary recourse simply to block the image on their end? That would leave them without any power to prevent the poster from sharing that image with anyone and everyone the victim knows. The victim might not even be immediately aware of that harassment if they block the image. Putting the burden on the end user to control what they see is not moderation. There needs to be some way for that content to be removed from the system globally for moderation to be effective.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#74

Post by _yid9 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

esja wrote: post #59

_yid9 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it will resolve, and in fact has been solved. K-means clustering. This will scale, is compatible with machine learning, and yields an effect that is good for the users of a service -- but is not useful to owners of a service that maximizes profit and control over user happiness. If trolls, jackasses, and idiots (by each users independent definition) get automatically segregated into groups where they see only ea…

Grouping by user rather than by content has a major weakness. Grandma can be lovely 99% of the time and a horrible racist the other 1%.

Also, remember: the ratings, themselves, have different meanings to different K-means clusters.

This insane drive to change the meanings of words (eg. every traditionally conservative leaning person is now a Nazi, and everyone proud of their unique cultural heritage is now a Racist, so long as they are also white) is no problem!

A member of a brittle, sensitive, easily-triggered group will quickly find themselves isolated and hearing only the few people who almost exactly match their identical beliefs. And, even those won't last long (just until the first imagined slight or use of the wrong adjective).

This, too, is instructive. Coddling a lack of resilience is not helpful to someone -- but, whatever. Fill your boots! If it works for you, have a blast with your two currently-acceptable friends! ;)

But seriously, the current Kristallnacht purge of social media is the best thing that could happen, in my opinion. It'll force a Cambrian explosion of new platforms that more capably handle differences of belief and tolerance!

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#75

Post by zozbot234 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #45

grahamburger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is why federation is an important aspect of decentralized networks, and is commonly listed as a reason for use Mastodon / the fediverse. Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Notably mastodon.social and the instances related to it haven't become cess pools of hate speech, because they do have strong moderation policies, but for users w…

> Each instance can set their own moderation policies and decide what other instances they want to federate with. Yeah, this is why the fediverse is terrible, too. Your site admin shouldn't be the one deciding who you can DM, or which people can follow your feed. Imagine if email worked that way.

> Your site admin shouldn't be the one deciding who you can DM, or which people can follow your feed.

That's a necessary affordance, given the technology. A mail server could indeed refuse to forward some of your emails, and this could even make some sense e.g. as part of spam prevention policy.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#76

Post by alwdgxzubpxnzcy » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

I was just thinking about "customizable moderation" that this article mentioned earlier today. I came up with a similar idea of lists that you can opt into following just like AdBlock filter lists or Twitter shared blocklists just like he mentioned. In terms of feature set I had a couple ideas this this post didn't mention. There could be two levels of blocking that filter lists could set, warm before showing and never show. Also blocking could be applied on a per user or a per post basis.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#77

Post by robryk » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #73

I agree with this article that a social network without moderation is worthless. However what this describes is not moderation, it is filtering. There needs to be some form of moderation. Imagine a scenario in which a revenge porn image is posted to the site. Is the victim's primary recourse simply to block the image on their end? That would leave them without any power to prevent the poster from sharing that image w…

The Web does not really have any such mechanisms (and certainly didn't have them back in the times where we had more search engines). Do you think Web is different in a way that makes it not require them, or that it suffers from their lack?

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#78

Post by swalsh » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #55

Thinking a new social network platform is destined to fail because it's a copy of something, but without the impetus that produced the original.It's the "make something people want," but more "make something they use for X." You need the original purpose. It has to be to make something that isn't itself. Myspace was mainly novelty and music, Facebook was for status minting from ivy colleges, other ones are for an exo…

I partially agree with you. Right now the people most likely to switch are going to be the people who have no home. The crackdown has started, but it's pretty early. The people kicked, or leaving at this point are not the ones you want to be the early founders of your social network. Remember, the first users set the tone for the community.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#79

Post by user-the-name » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #73

I agree with this article that a social network without moderation is worthless. However what this describes is not moderation, it is filtering. There needs to be some form of moderation. Imagine a scenario in which a revenge porn image is posted to the site. Is the victim's primary recourse simply to block the image on their end? That would leave them without any power to prevent the poster from sharing that image w…

Yes, the purpose of moderation is far wider than "I don't want to see this post". It is there to protect people from malicious activities, and also very importantly, it is there to shape the community. Moderation is needed to set limits of what is and isn't accepted in a community. If those limits are not present, communities quickly succumb to its worst elements.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#80

Post by user-the-name » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

_yid9 wrote: post #48

TameAntelope wrote: post #8

Regardless of technical viability, any service without moderation is a service mainstream society will shun, which really just means people won't use it, build tools for it, or generally accept others who use the service. People seem to both want a service that is immune from society and also used by society. That's a conflict that won't resolve.

Yes, it will resolve, and in fact has been solved. K-means clustering. This will scale, is compatible with machine learning, and yields an effect that is good for the users of a service -- but is not useful to owners of a service that maximizes profit and control over user happiness. If trolls, jackasses, and idiots (by each users independent definition) get automatically segregated into groups where they see only ea…

> I say: why, again, don't you want your police service to be able to infiltrate these groups and observe these people, and arrest them as they see fit?

That is not how it works. The police does not need this. They also will not really use it. However, this does give repugnant ideas a place to spread. It normalises them. It makes things much, much worse.