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My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

carter.sande.duodecima.technology

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Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#101

Post by DanBC »

pjkundert wrote: post #88
DanBC wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A member of a brittle, sensitive, easily-triggered group Hilarious when coming from someone losing their shit about the pushback against white supremacy.

Who's that you're referring to? I don't agree with any "supremacy", let alone "white". So, are you saying that being brittle, sensitive and easily-triggered is a viable life strategy, and should be supported at all costs?

I'm saying you're being brittle, sensitive, and easily triggered, and that maybe you need to stop supporting white supremacists.

Also, you should probably read up on Kristallnacht before clumsily using it in metaphors. Maybe start here:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-he...

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#102

Post by jmull »

Really interesting. These ideas are great, but need some work.

E.g., "stick your head in the sand" moderation -- where I can decide what I don't see, but the content is still out there for anyone else to choose to see -- utterly fails at half the purpose of moderation.

How is content moderated that is harmful to one set of people if available to another set of people?

Child pornography, revenge pornography, doxxing, coordination of violent insurrections.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#103

Post by prox »

breuleux wrote: post #62
convolvatron wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more importantly, moderation is an overlay. instead of worrying about what and what isn't acceptable speech, let subcommunities form with their own policies and they can curate their own worldview that doesn't at all address bubbleism, but trying to decide which set of statements is 'ok' for everyone seems like a lost cause

It could still address bubbles in a small way, by making them more accessible: if you can switch the overlay easily, you can get a peek at what other people see and understand their point of view a little better. You can also see what your favorite overlay is censoring and decide whether you're okay with that. Also, one avenue to radicalization is a feeling that your views are being censored. If you get to choose you…

Bubbles by themselves aren’t necessarily the problem. I could live in art related bubble with fellow artists, and there is no problem there.

Insulated bubbles are the problem I think, these echo chambers are a problem, especially unmoderated or those thriving by hate, aggrevation and/or exclusion.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#104

Post by jmull »

_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…

> If trolls, jackasses, and idiots (by each users independent definition) get automatically segregated into groups where they see only each-others posts, and out-groups just never see their posts: problem solved.

The events of Jan 6 show that leaves a rather huge problem unsolved.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#105

Post by _yid9 »

user-the-name wrote: post #80
_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…

> 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.

Uhhm... I'm wondering how you reach the conclusion that the police don't trawl social media looking for things. This is precisely what they're doing. Maybe keep up with current events!

It's a gold-mine for every law-enforcement service on the planet, for good or ill. They drop to their knees every night, and thank God for Twitter, Facebook, Parler, etc.

And, you might be partially right -- it'll only work for rounding up the really dumb ones. All the smart ones are already on Signal, Telegram, ...

But, seriously. This has got to end.

Throwing a kid into juvenile detention because they yell at their friend "I'm gonna kill you!" in the middle of a game or make a gun shape with their hand at school has got to hold different weight than someone posting an instructional video on beheading. But, no, you have kids kicked out of school because someone saw a toy gun on a Zoom call...

The real problem for police is that they have 5% of the population being called "Racist" or "Terrorist" or "Nazi". Not 0.001%. They can't possible track down any real risks.

However, a social network using K-means Clustering easily isolates the "everyone other than me is a racist" crowd, from the "we're normally quiet and tolerant, but holy smokes this guy has really lost the plot" crowd.

The police could use that kind of help.

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#107

Post by swalsh »

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.

It is certainly an unresolvable conflict, my major concern is to what extent those that control the "Freedom From" internet will go to prevent the harm done by the "Freedom To" internet. Will my Verizon connection be shutdown if I have a node running?

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#108

Post by fulafel »

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.

We still use email, blogs and the telephone network (including sms/mms). And newer decentralized systems like Mastodon. These kind of have moderation but it's decentralized and island specific (also regulated in case of the telephone network).

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#109

Post by optimalsolver »

Look, any truly decentralized network will need to involve users hosting their own instances, along with using an entire suite of encryption and anonymity tools.

No way the average person will be doing that.

That means most/all of the people you'll be talking to on these networks would be hardcore techno-libertarians. A plus for some, a very strong negative for others.

Semi-relevant XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/191/

Re: My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network

#110

Post by motohagiography »

koalaman wrote: post #92
rohan1024 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a piece is missing in the current Internet infrastructure although I have no idea what it is. Consider this, WhatsApp stories are not much different than personal blog but putting up stories takes few clicks while self hosting is whole new endeavor. Ideally everyone should own a blog/self host. This would solve the issues with centralization. The problem is hosting a blog and discovering it is still not a…

I think 'Social Networking' is really just a bad name for an internet identity and sharing model no different from the same problem in Operating Systems. The internet is the computer but it's missing identity and acls. With those things anybody could write an indexer that could build a feed for you.

That's the salient point. When you re-frame social media as collaboration tools, the answer to the question, "collaboration on what?" comes to the fore.

What is the underlying project that requires collaboration? I have a few ideas, but I hope framing that way yields ideas for others.

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