Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

changelog.complete.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 304 posts

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#231

Post by pokey00 »

minoru wrote: post #228
pokey00 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does firstmastodon.local need to be federated with anothermastodon.local for you to follow someone on it? I don't understand the system well enough to know if this is a dumb question or not.

Ain't a dumb question at all! It actually takes reading the ActivityPub specs to answer it, so no surprise if you didn't get it just from reading the landing page ;) The answer is: it'll happen automatically. Just search for someone's handle, and your server will talk to that other server. When you follow that other users, your server will start federating with that other servers. Note though that servers might block…

Gotcha, thanks for the info. That does seem like a real problem, and I do see the complexity of the issue. Are there any current proposals for tackling it without adding centralization? Or do we just acknowledge/accept that that's a tradeoff?

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#232

Post by jrm4 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #90
stncls wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Facebook's upper management is definitely not freaking out about Mastodon. However, from my own experience working at a large, somewhat ethically-challenged organisation (not fb), it would not surprise me in the least if they gently yet actively pushed down a competitor, provided it can be done discreetly.

Doubt it, not worth the liabillity risk.

I would love to live in the world in which there were some actual liability risk to facebook on this (or for that matter, on anything important to it.)

I genuinely am curious, in Facebook's world today, how do you see this playing out in a way that actually hurts Facebook. I legit want to know so I can actively work toward making it happen.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#233

Post by jrm4 »

rkk3 wrote: post #193
smolder wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course, at least now. Yet, it does present a non-negligible risk, in the same way that some startups can become unicorns, or some college kids web project can become a global giant.

> Yet, it does present a non-negligible risk, Negligible: so small or unimportant as to be not worth considering; insignificant. The first page of search Mastodon results for me are all about a heavy metal band from Atlanta. Sounds like a negligible risk to me.

But when you have near-infinity resources, everything is technically "non-negligible," and that's the case here. Let's say there's a 0.01% chance that Mastodon beats Facebook. Okay, what's 0.01% of however much Facebook makes? That's how much they should spend on it, and I'd bet that amount of money is nothing to scoff at.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#234

Post by perihelions »

pope_meat wrote: post #17
b0tzzzzzzman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can dream. That's still free.

I'm looking forward to dreams as a service, with personalized ads sprinkled in. Only 9.99 a month!

Related:

https://dxe.pubpub.org/pub/dreamadvertising/release/1 ("Advertising in Dreams is Coming: Now What?")

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#235

Post by kevincox »

This was the final straw that lead me to start moving away from Facebook Messenger. They were preventing me from sending seemingly random links in 1:1 chats. That was enough reason to start moving friends to a solution with E2EE.

This example my have not been malicious, but it is a start reminder that you are allowing them to see, and control, your communication. That is something that I would prefer not to occur.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#236

Post by ggdG »

gargron wrote: post #222
throwawaysea wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem I have with Mastodon is that it has a culture of censorship equivalent to Facebook. My recollection is that to be listed in their directory of instances, you need to abide by the content rules created by key Mastodon people, and those instances in turn are required to only peer with other instances that follow the same rules. Those rules basically include moderation based on various progressive politi…

> My recollection is that to be listed in their directory of instances, you need to abide by the content rules created by key Mastodon people, and those instances in turn are required to only peer with other instances that follow the same rules. Those rules basically include moderation based on various progressive political stances, so you can’t honestly discuss controversial topics from different perspectives. Here…

> The only hard requirement related to content is that racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia be not allowed.

I don't know anyone who's a self-declared racist, sexist, homophobe or transphobe.

But these things mean different things to different people.

So let's say JK Rowling wants to join. Would she be welcome?

What about Glenn Greenwald?

Or Andy Ngô?

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#237

Post by rsj_hn »

jdavis703 wrote: post #194
ergocoder wrote: post #188

FB can ban whoever they want as long as it is not a protected class. FB can ban you because you like to eat broccoli or for whatever any reason. Many people support this idea during trump's ban. So you will just need to suck it up.

Political affiliation is a protected class where FB and TWTR are headquartered. Considering the overwhelming majority of Republicans remain on the platform, it seems the removal had nothing to do with class.

> "Political affiliation is a protected class where FB and TWTR "

This is false.

What is true is that in some limited cases and with a lot of caveats, you cannot be fired for your political affiliation in California, assuming that affiliation is expressed outside of work, etc. That's it. Please do not try to stretch that bit of weak labor law to protecting posts on TWTR because they are headquartered in CA.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#238

Post by alisonkisk »

jrm4 wrote: post #233
rkk3 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet, it does present a non-negligible risk, Negligible: so small or unimportant as to be not worth considering; insignificant. The first page of search Mastodon results for me are all about a heavy metal band from Atlanta. Sounds like a negligible risk to me.

But when you have near-infinity resources, everything is technically "non-negligible," and that's the case here. Let's say there's a 0.01% chance that Mastodon beats Facebook. Okay, what's 0.01% of however much Facebook makes? That's how much they should spend on it, and I'd bet that amount of money is nothing to scoff at.

This is the fallacy of ignoring the existence of extremely small numbers. if mastodon had a 0.01% chance of "beating" facebook, it would have many $millions in funding.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#239

Post by tayo42 »

Nevermark wrote: post #223
tayo42 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your making excuses for being confidently uninformed.

I have not bothered to speculate why the took action in the case being discussed here. Not informing customers, then being amused that they are uninformed (and some invariably speculate), is not a solution to anything.

I'm amused by how confidently people assume they know whats going on when they're clearly clueless. They're not my customers, I'm not speaking on behalf of my employer. I just in the past have had real information about what is happening in related situations(eg. someone gets banned, post is moderated, technical outages) I find it funny how clueless people are yet act like they're not.

Am i not allowed to find amusement in dumb people? Then maybe use that as a reminder to relax when you don't have all the information.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#240

Post by alisonkisk »

jdavis703 wrote: post #189
Barrin92 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>aren't you giving too benefit of the doubt the largest mastodon instance has 500k users. Facebook has two billion users. If you can post twitter and tiktok and tumblr links on facebook, do you seriously think there's someone sitting at facebook taking names and making lists about a social network that practically nobody even uses there are competitors a hundred times as large you can link too. My first guess is it p…

> do you seriously think there's someone sitting at facebook taking names and making lists about a social network that practically nobody even uses Yes, when I worked at a 500-person startup there was an employee who’s sole task was to stay aware of our established competitors and nimbler startups. It was jokingly nicknamed the “office of paranoia.” That said, I highly doubt FB is using their list of competitors to b…

Mastodon is neither of "established competitors and nimbler startups."
Post reply on HN