The decentralized web and the future of Section 230

The non-propaganda word for this is "convincing."

> federated platforms—networking environments enabled by communally—agreed upon standards of computing and norms. These technologies can give users more control over their platform experience.

My server is not governed by any communally-agreed-upon norms, nor does it give users control. It's governed by _my_ norms, period (and users can either agree with me or find a different server). Incidentally these norms coincide well with communal norms because I'm a reasonably "well-adjusted" individual, but there's a reason I whitelist instead of using Fediblock: Fediblock is somebody else's list of servers that they personally find offensive. Looking at the list it seems to coincide well with what I find offensive, but I want to be the sole arbiter of who I give time to, and I think therein lies the real power of federated platforms: communities of consensus grow/split/merge/etc completely organically and in sync with the memetic evolution of the node administrators.

If you believe the earth is flat, go nuts. Or if you don't but you want to share the proof of why they're wrong, you can do that too. Or perhaps you don't want to have them in your life at all. You can have all of these experiences equally well on a federated platform. People can form the communities they want to be in and be responsible for the growth of those communities in ways that are impossible with a corporation calling the shots.

...or a centralized platform in general, regardless of commercialization. A friend and I were discussing the possibility of running a federated platform for our country. It sounded like a cool idea at first, but as I thought about it I realized: there are neo-Nazis in my country. I don't want to engage with them at all. But I do believe that if we ran a national platform that as citizens they would be entitled to participate, however stupid their views. Therefore I abandoned the project. I may believe they're entitled to public services as human beings and citizens, but I don't want to give them a platform to spread their message. As long as my server is governed purely by my personal norms, I can in good conscience refuse service to them with no other justification than I don't want to and it's my server.

Because that would put us halfway there.

I would still disagree with you on a host of other issues, but at least you would admit your initial statement was not accurate ( paraphrased as 'they left to form their own communities').

Also, who made you the authority of who gets to be toxic and who is not? I find you toxic. Do I get to ban you? I don't like your fringe theory on 'fringe conspiracy theories spreading' spreading any further..

Do you see how ridiculous it gets and how fast this argument ends up in absurd situation we are currently in? Do I really need to spell out why it is a really, really bad idea to go down the rabbit hole you suggest?

Musk does. Are you ok with with the toxic rules he imposes?

Again, do you really want to go down this rabbit hole?

late edit:

It is, at best, an assertion. You don't believe me? Look at Biden's laptop saga. The downright moronic attempts to shut it down in this panicky fashion only reinforced the belief that it must be true, because it was being clamped down so hard and NOW, partially, thanks to your asserted, proclaimed and clearly enforced wisdom, we get to see at least two year show of House hearings on it. Great Job!

So yeah, so very effective.

I can create a private group that excludes people who wear purple, because purple wearing is not a protected class under law. I can do the same for people who program in APL, or who have ever ridden a tricycle, or listen to "Freebird".

However, I cannot create a private group that excludes on the basis of any protected status (e.g. sex, religion, ethnicity, age).

But your actions are doing that. You can say "I think these are unconscionable words" until you're blue in the face, but who are people going to believe, you, the person who lets people say those words, or someone else who bans people who say them?

Part of influencing user behavior is controlling which ideas can be discussed. Subreddits very aggressively do this by, like, having rules about what content can be discussed. More than a banlist of unacceptable topics and ideas, they only allow discussion of very particular topics. You can't post about politics on /r/pets. That is influencing user behavior by influencing content. What it feels acceptable to post (user behavior) is influenced by what you see (content). The two are inseparable. The difference between /r/science and /b/ is what content is allowed, because content creates community.