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Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

blog.paulbohm.com

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Re: Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

#11

Post by selectodude »

bohm wrote: post #8
davidw wrote: post #7

The tricky bit is kind of hand-waved away here: > throw The One Ring (Twitter) back into the volcano from which it was forged What does content moderation and that whole thorny problem look like on this new system? I don't want to hang out in a bar with a drunk nazi and his buddies screaming at everyone. Yeah, it's tricky and there are all kinds of difficult considerations and tradeoffs and it's all quite imperfect,…

Author here. You get to have all the moderation, filtering, etc. that is implemented on the servers you use. I'm sure there will be servers that very closely try to approximate what Twitter is/has been doing. Servers also can share any and all information needed to effectively moderate.

So it’s closed source Mastodon?

Re: Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

#12

Post by jjcon »

rvz wrote: post #4
bohm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an actual critique of replacing centralized companies with decentralized protocols?

Such responses are typical from those emotionally invested in the perpetual Twitter schadenfreude brigade. They are too emotional to have an objective answer at the moment. The main difficulty is the network effect which Twitter has entrenched for decades. We're talking about 220M+ active users on the platform. Daily.

I’m as annoyed as the next person at those looking to see the new twitter fail, having said that I simultaneously love the idea of new things challenging the status quo. Decentralization is somewhat a core tenant of the hacker ethos so I don’t think it is strange to see that reflected here.

Re: Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

#13

Post by bohm »

selectodude wrote: post #11
bohm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. You get to have all the moderation, filtering, etc. that is implemented on the servers you use. I'm sure there will be servers that very closely try to approximate what Twitter is/has been doing. Servers also can share any and all information needed to effectively moderate.

So it’s closed source Mastodon?

I don't expect it to stay closed source. But there are significant differences to Mastodon. Just to give one example: Mastodon server admins actually can read your private messages. Also Blue Sky's approach to data portability and how to implement filtering/indexing is more developed. It might be personal preference, but I prefer AT Protocol's approach where the servers have less powers, and the users have more power. A lot of little design decisions add up to a qualitative difference.

Re: Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

#14

Post by polygamous_bat »

bohm wrote: post #13
selectodude wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it’s closed source Mastodon?

I don't expect it to stay closed source. But there are significant differences to Mastodon. Just to give one example: Mastodon server admins actually can read your private messages. Also Blue Sky's approach to data portability and how to implement filtering/indexing is more developed. It might be personal preference, but I prefer AT Protocol's approach where the servers have less powers, and the users have more power…

I would imagine Twitter server admins can also read your private messages if they really wanted to since Twitter doesn't use E2E encryption. Am I unaware of something/Is there a reason to believe differently?

Re: Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

#15

Post by detrites »

jacobreg wrote: post #6

There's a lot of consideration of if we could, and previous little of if we should. Unmoderated sites inevitably become breading grounds for harassment and worse, especially as more mainstream platforms get better at driving this content away. I would be terrified to live in a world where kiwifarms and its ilk cannot be shut down

Why?

The vast majority of people aren't interested in terrorising minority groups, or anyone, or enacting violence of any kind on any people of any kind.

While situations like that, and sites like that are an important issue, they're not the type of issue that spirals wildly out of control and takes over the world if left unchecked.

It doesn't mean they should be left unchecked - any such negative outcomes are horrific and awful and should be minimised as much as possible.

But it does mean we don't need to feel terrorised by them, which is good - as we'll make calmer, more rational and, so, better decisions about them.

Re: Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

#17

Post by bohm »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #14
bohm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect it to stay closed source. But there are significant differences to Mastodon. Just to give one example: Mastodon server admins actually can read your private messages. Also Blue Sky's approach to data portability and how to implement filtering/indexing is more developed. It might be personal preference, but I prefer AT Protocol's approach where the servers have less powers, and the users have more power…

I would imagine Twitter server admins can also read your private messages if they really wanted to since Twitter doesn't use E2E encryption. Am I unaware of something/Is there a reason to believe differently?

Yes, another reason to move away. Although Elon has also stated that he's tasked Twitter engineers with working on implementing E2E encrypted DMs.

Re: Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

#19

Post by bombcar »

jacobreg wrote: post #6

There's a lot of consideration of if we could, and previous little of if we should. Unmoderated sites inevitably become breading grounds for harassment and worse, especially as more mainstream platforms get better at driving this content away. I would be terrified to live in a world where kiwifarms and its ilk cannot be shut down

I assume you’re terrified, then, because said farm hasn’t been shut down and apparently won’t be.

Re: Blue Sky: Can Twitter be owned by its users?

#20

Post by zol »

> Having all the data of the entire network on all the Big-World Servers. That's what you need to do if you want to crunch the data, make it searchable, and provide algorithms that help you discover new content and new people to follow.

How is this all possible if the data is encrypted? Also, what’s the economic incentive for building and maintaining the software that runs on the servers?

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