Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media • Hacker News Board

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#271

Post by mcv » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 8:15 AM UTC

allenu wrote: post #205

tedunangst wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live and learn? It astonishes me that people would get so worked up about the possibility that somebody somewhere is posting and you might not see it. Guess what? They're already posting today and you're not seeing their posts.

You have a point, but think about it from the newbies perspective. They have no idea how many posts they won't see. Everybody is used to centralized where they see everything and now they're being told to check out this alternative where you might not see everything. Okay, does that mean 50% of what gets posted won't be seen? 25%? 5%? Will I be able to see what my favorite celeb posts? There's zero context for a newb…

> Everybody is used to centralized where they see everything

You never see everything. There's way too much of it. Everything is going to be a selection. The question is who is going to do the selecting.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#272

Post by mcv » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 8:30 AM UTC

bboygravity wrote: post #206

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #58

I really want to like Mastodon, and every few years I make an attempt to join. But then, I am faced with the decision of choosing a server - if I like cooking and golf, do I join the cooking server or the golf server? What if I choose wrong ? - and the choice overload makes me just give up. And even if I really joined, then apparently my server's administrator would be able to silently prevent me from seeing other "e…

Am I the only one who doesn't get why chosing a server is necesary? I just don't get it at all from a user experience perspective. Do we need to pick servers with Bittorrent? no. Just tell it what file you want (magnet link). Do we need to pick servers with Tox? no. Just tell it what friend you want to talk to (contact ID). Or to pick a centralized example: do we need to pick a server on Twitter? no. duh. Then why is…

You also have to pick a phone or email provider. Would you prefer if those had only a single option available?

You don't pick a server with Bittorrent because it runs locally, which you can also do with Mastodon or other distributed networks. Though if you want others to be able to reach you, you probably need to set up a domain name and leave your server on. The problem with using a Bittorrent-like setup is that you don't have a persistent identity there.

You don't need to pick a server for Twitter because there is only one. You have no choice. Mastodon and other distributed social networks offer choice. Imagine, if you didn't like how Twitter moderated their content, and you thought you could do that better, you could simply spin up your own Twitter server and still communicate with everybody on Twitter?

But you're right that being forced to make this choice on little information is still an extra step, and not a great one. Maybe there should be a single default choice? Maybe assign one randomly for those who don't know? Because it honestly doesn't matter that much which server you pick. You can still see and follow everything. The only difference is really the moderation/blocking policy. Just pick a big one and you're probably fine.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#273

Post by mcv » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 8:45 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #113

bergenty wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully. Elon never felt like a racist to me plus he’s been my hero for a very long time so I hope I don’t have to start disliking him.

Heroes don't generally make libelous pedo accusations against people who are trying to do good things.

Lots of people seem to want to see Elon (or any famous person) as either a hero or a villain, but the reality is that most people are a bit of both. They do both good and bad. I appreciate Musk for making electric cars sexy, making space flight cheaper and less wasteful, and making lots of solar panels. I don't like him picking stupid internet fights or occasionally going mad with power. It's a mix.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#274

Post by mcv » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 8:50 AM UTC

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #203

Karunamon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing even remotely objectionable there? It's no secret that twitter has been a money-losing toxic cesspit for years. Making the moderation fair and transparent will go miles all on its own.

Elon’s improved blue checkmark is basically a shadow ban system for the average person that doesn’t pay $8. If the average person is talking to a wall and the influencers are getting all the engagement why would they stick around? I also feel like all these discussions are a distraction from the real issue. The average person doesn’t like using Twitter and never will.

> If the average person is talking to a wall and the influencers are getting all the engagement why would they stick around?

Aren't most people on Twitter exactly to follow those influencers? I don't think most people would ever expect global engagement from any of their tweets.

The real issue here is not average people, but people with something important to say who are not rich, like scientists and activists. They (and their followers) are the ones who might be hurt by the expensive checkmarks.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#275

Post by mcv » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 8:53 AM UTC

m3kw9 wrote: post #264

weberer wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine you need to choose a server every time you wanted to surf the net ??? I don't have to imagine. That's exactly what happens when you enter a URL.

That url is the actual content, I meant an intermediary say a proxy

Like your ISP?

I've been thinking that, just like your ISP provides you with an email address (do they all still do that? Mine does), maybe they should also automatically provide you with a social network account.

It's a bit odd how everything today still links back to email, which many consider dated, but we still don't have a good replacement for it. This might be ready for a new universal distributed communication system.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#276

Post by mcv » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 9:42 AM UTC

woah wrote: post #11

The uptick of interest in Mastodon due to Musk buying Twitter doesn’t make sense. Only the left is angry about the acquisition. The right is gleeful. What the left is angry and the right is gleeful about is the idea that Musk is a “free speech absolutist” and might unban Donald Trump and other right wing / fascist media personalities. Guess what: in the fediverse, it would never have been possible to ban Trump in the…

> The right is gleeful. What the left is angry and the right is gleeful about is the idea that Musk is a “free speech absolutist” and might unban Donald Trump and other right wing / fascist media personalities.

I think this represents what's really going on. Firstly, Musk is not a "free speech absolutist". The issue is moderation policies. Every single platform moderates. Even 4chan. Any platform that doesn't, gets overrun by spam. If not spam, then by bots, or trolls, or something else that makes normal conversations impossible. Moderation is about sign-to-noise ratios. Everybody, both left and right, wants a good signal-to-noise ratio, but they disagree about what they consider signal and what they consider noise.

The problem with Musk's takeover is that he sounds like he doesn't have the first clue about how moderation works and what all the concerns are. The things he says about Twitter keep contradicting each other. It undermines a lot of people's faith in his leadership, and therefore the future direction of Twitter.

And that's the attraction of the fediverse: it offers real freedom of speech, and you get more control over moderation. Everybody wins.

> Trump would be truly unbannable. He would run his own instance

He already does that. Truth Social is Mastodon. So is Gab. It's just that Truth Social blocks every other instance, and everybody blocks Gab.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#277

Post by kaba0 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 10:54 AM UTC

woah wrote: post #248

kaba0 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But mastodon is not without moderation on a per instance basis.

Also as I said in my comment, the people who want Trump banned do not want to prevent themselves from seeing his tweets, they want to prevent other people from seeing his tweets. This is what Mastodon prevents. If they just didn’t want to see the tweets themselves, they can block him.

Well, maybe because it is the best for everyone to not see posts which has the potential of armed resurgence against the democratically elected officials against the country, also known as a coup, especially not from a traitor with connections to Saudi Arabia and Russia? And I’m not even from the US, but the country’s fate with the biggest military is insanely important to anyone who shares this planet.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#278

Post by lrvick » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 11:19 AM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #263

lrvick wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Mastodon was fully centralized like Twitter and offered that experience, it would need an immense source of funding, and need ads, and shareholders, and would be losing money rapidly until some billionare bought it out... like Twitter. Mastodon is built so that there is no single point of failure, but that means users have no single point of signup. It is like email, or matrix. Host your own on your own domain for…

isn't the whole point of federated service that I don't have to be on the same server as people I'm following?

Of course. I only suggest that for people that cannot decide what server to choose.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#279

Post by themitigating » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 1:05 PM UTC

moistly wrote: post #243

metadat wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having no sources makes it difficult or impossible to move the conversation forward in a meaningful way. What is the point of sharing stories with no credible backing or linkage back to reality? "Ah, I hear what you're saying. That's interesting." It's not that I doubt your honesty, it's an issue of not enough information or context to figure out anything substantial at all.

The root question is “How was the moderation unfair?” Examples were provided. If you do not doubt their honesty, then you agree that unfair moderation took place.

They could think they are telling the truth but are being manipulayed.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#280

Post by Zak » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

yanderekko wrote: post #268

Zak wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could replace "Mastodon instances" with "websites" and see the same effect. Several sites used by hate groups and similar have gone offline indefinitely after Cloudflare refused to provide them DDoS protection.

Yes, that's what I have in mind. It's unclear if just having the various sides of the culture war creating their own social networks is actually a stable equilibrium.

Having a culture war probably isn't a stable equilibrium.