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Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

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

#261

Post by dredmorbius »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #258
dredmorbius wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, China's model of media control focuses more on dillution and distraction than on overt censorship. Both exist. But the larger effort is put into distraction. The recent Russian model is more on bullshit and subverting notions of trust entirely. American propaganda seems largely based on a) what sells and b) promoting platitudes, wishful thinking, and c) (at least historically) heart-warming (ra…

> Both exist. Yes, censorship and propaganda go hand in hand. In 1922 Walter Lippmann wrote in his seminal work, Public Opinion , > Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct a propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. [1] [2] [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pub…

Right.

Both are also tied inherently to monopoly, along with surveillance and both general and targeted manipulation.

https://joindiaspora.com/posts/7bfcf170eefc013863fa002590d8e...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771470

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

#262

Post by eterevsky »

Facebook is not known to ban mentioning their actual competitors like Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Telegram etc. so why would it single out this small social network?

It seems more like it was a false positive of some moderation system that triggered because the post sounded too much like an advertisement.

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

#263

Post by 0xdeadb00f »

ineedasername wrote: post #47
mikeytown2 wrote: post #22

https://joinmastodon.org/ Might as well see what FB is scared about

If I used social networks, I might give it a try. (I did actually check it out though) But all social media networks seem anti-productive to me and, well, just not actually very social. With respect to connecting with family & friends, I'd much prefer a pure platform based pretty much on just that. With respect to other people with interesting things to say, I'd prefer blogs aggregating & curated sites like, well, HN…

IME mastodon/pleroma/"the fediverse" is really cool because you have two kind of communities you interact with. Depending on the instance you can have a grand old time interacting with people in your "local" timeline (your instance only), but you can also venture into the wild west that is the federated timeline from all instances.

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

#264

Post by qwytw »

whoknowswhat11 wrote: post #204
nitrogen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communication platforms are a bit different. Nobody would be okay with Comcast blocking the signup page or mentions of Google Fiber or your municipal broadbrand network, or Verizon disconnecting your call if you mention AT&T.

I think folks really do not understand the difference between Verizon calls (regulated under common carrier rules) and Facebook (a social network). Facebook claims to be a social network. Those types of networks normally DO NOT allow you to promote other social networks. Even review platforms which are a bit more communication in nature block posting other sites reviews.

Yes Facebook is clearly closer to Walmart or McDonalds than to an internet provider. Yet section 230 applies to ISPs and FB but not to Walmart...

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

#265

Post by inkblotuniverse »

ineedasername wrote: post #256
inkblotuniverse wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data that's had data censored from it is bad data.

Defining terms here is important, so let's avoid the word bad for a moment because it can be applied in different ways. 1) You can have an empty dataset. 2) You can have an incomplete dataset. 3) you can have a dataset where the data is wrong All of these situations, in some sense, are "bad" What I'm saying is that, going into a situation, my preference would be #2 > #1 > #3. Because I always assume a dataset could b…

I'd argue Facebook's censorship leaves us with 2 and 3. They don't remove things bevause they're wrong; they remove them because they go against the current orthodoxy. Most things are wrong, so most things that go against the modern orthodoxy are wrong... but wrong things that go WITH the modern orthodoxy aren't removed.

It's a scientist who removes outliers in the direction that refute his ideas, but not ones in the direction that support it.

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

#266

Post by rapnie »

true_religion wrote: post #259
rapnie wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be more reasons to see Mastodon as a potential threat. There's something of a different paradigm to it. First of all it is decentralized (federated), and anyone can spin up servers for themself or a community of users, set their own topic and rules (CoC, ToS) and connect with the larger social network (the Fediverse). Second of all this fediverse is based on open-standards and anyone can develop their own s…

Mastodon is just multiuser microblogging with linkbacks.

More than just that. Mastodon is one of multiple microblogging apps on the fediverse that can seamlessly interact, and get gradually more integrated with other types of application e.g. for blogging, media publishing, livestreaming, podcasting, event planning, etc.

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

#267

Post by minoru »

pokey00 wrote: post #231
minoru wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As far as I can tell, Fediverse embraces this as a privacy feature. (It's more of a bump than a roadblock, but still.) I'm not aware of any projects to fix this (although I'm not very immersed into Fediverse development, so maybe check https://fediverse.party, they have a list of Fedi projects).

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

#268

Post by minoru »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #257
minoru wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Theoretically you could layer something on top right? Something that consumes and publicizes everything. And then I guess you come full circle back to centralization but at least you could potentially view and search both a "local" and "global" feed.

Sure. Centralization could probably be avoided by storing the index in a DHT or something.

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

#269

Post by NoblePublius »

Ekaros wrote: post #49
NoblePublius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest unreported scandal in big tech is the 100s of 1000s of contractors that work exclusively for these companies. Accenture provides thousands of content moderators to FB, none of whom have any recourse to FB HR or rights to pursue union status at FB. Google is the same.

Why should they have right to pursue union status at FB? They should do that with whatever company is employing them and if there is that many it might even be realistic.

I think it’s BS for the biggest, most profitable companies in the world to subcontract vital work. It’s professional apartheid. If you’re a product manager, you deserve a FB.com email and a sushi bar in the office and the best benefits, but if you are an Accenture contractor that reports to that FB product manager, you get no benefits. For all the talk of pay equity that activists within these companies do, they are largely silent on the pay disparities between themselves and the outsourced contractors on which they are utterly dependent.

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

#270

Post by inkblotuniverse »

gargron wrote: post #221
inkblotuniverse wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon follows the activitypub protocol. There are other backends that implement the same protocol, like Pleroma; the Fediverse (all the systems that use activitypub) is bigger than mastodon, and much bigger than mastodon.social and co. There's a sort of blocking firewall around mastodon.social and sites broadly on the same 'side' as it, in that all these servers tend to share blocklists. One of the things they'll…

We at mastodon.social don't copy our blocklist from anybody and don't consider ourselves to be on anyone's "side". Our blocklist is of a quite reasonable length for 5 years of operation and based on personal experiences of our moderation team only: https://mastodon.social/about/more#unavailable-content

I've seen your blocklist, and meant more that smaller instances that are cut from similar broad-culture cloth are likely to copy mastodon.social's blocklist (I think doing that makes sense if you know you share sensibilities with mastodon.social's moderators).

I follow plenty of people on mastodon.social, mastodon.tech, etc., as well as people from a lot of the suspended instances in your list, and I can clearly see/feel two (really more) different 'cultures' in the fediverse.

The GP is more aligned with the second culture, I think- the culture you could label 'free speech maximalist'.

I don't really think mastodon.social should change- you've banned things you don't like, you perceive certain messages as pernicious enough to warrant a ban, that's fair- you've made a space with a certain tone and flavor, that suitable for a certain type of person.

But people are diverse, and so there are plenty that find the culture and tone of mastodon.social inferior to, say, Poast.

I think people with different sensibilities are suited to different spaces, and that it makes sense to point out that some of the spaces on mastodon.social's blocklist have value- maybe not to the median member on mastodon.social, but to people not of your culture.

To be frank, you're progressives. There's nothing wrong with that! Some of my best friends are progressives! But it's a lens that colors how you view the world, and what's ban-worthy. Again, nothing wrong with making a space that conforms to your sensibilities- but I wanted to make it clear to the GP that there are plenty of instances that don't have the same sociopolitical 'flavor' as mastoson.social, and that mastodon.social sits at the graph -centre of a particular subset of the federated network that is of similar flavor.

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