Moderation and ownership should go hand and hand. Moderators in Reddit essentially have fake sweat equity for their efforts. There has to be a better model and I think decentralization is key.
The case for the decentralization of online forums
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Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
#22Decentralization is important because you need a point of reach in case you get cut off from the centralized platform or (more likely) it gets taken down. Otherwise you’re cut off, or a group is cut off and dissolves.
But word spreads around pretty easily, and even though most forums are centralized, there are a lot of forums. Many centralized platforms = a decentralized platform, because people connected to multiple will share messages across channels.
The biggest issue is like, in the Reddit debacle, many communities are likely to be hurt or even destroyed. And it will be hard to re-form them and get near the same amount of popularity
Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
#23How does moderation work with decentralization
great question - something i've been thinking about a lot. my framework is, - moderation needs two levels (top level and grassroots) - top level - has to come from communities that are not in an "accepted" list which shouldn't be allowed to form. (the usual suspects like hate speech, CSAM). one way to think about is having community server owners "stake" some sort of investment and risk losing it in case communities…
> top level - has to come from communities that are not in an "accepted" list which shouldn't be allowed to form. (the usual suspects like hate speech, CSAM)
Even this becomes tricky because you first have to make a common list of banned content and define the lines between what each category of content is. Sure a huge majority of people would like to see CSAM on the list, but they definitely won't agree on what is/isn't CSAM in their opinion
I've recently been working through whether any level of content centralization is possible without the fundamental challenge of moderation. If anyone can follow me by consuming content I post to my own site then the main questions are around discoverability. If I'm posting content to a server and service that someone else is directly responsible for, even if federated, they have to consider moderation and the array of different content laws globally.
Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
#24I've never quite wrapped my head around where decentralization ends and federation begins.
What's really the difference between the two? Is it a question of degree, or in this example is it only decentralized if individuals in the network own their own content?
Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
#25And then at the end of an article with nice ideas for an open web, there's a link to a Twitter account. Viksit.com has an RSS feed (which I follow now, with my own website that works perfect on an open web), but there's no mention anywhere, also no RSS logo anywhere. Strange, haha.
Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
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Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
#27On that article, decentralization only means going back to early 2000's with small hosted forum sites or something still centralized like Mastodon. Technology truly moved far in the meanwhile. At the moment the only protocol that goes beyond expectations is Nostr. Over there it doesn't matter where your data is hosted and there are zero blochains. The only thing that matters is your private key (identity) and with th…
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Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
#28How does moderation work with decentralization
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Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
#29We are holding this discussion on a classic, centralized, web1.0 forum which - from my vantage point - is one of the most valuable and enriching forums currently online. What's wrong with HN ? What's wrong with metafilter ? What's wrong with letsrun or doom9 ? The problem is the mistaken notion that these can be big businesses. If you can let go of the economics there is no technical - or usability - hurdle. We know…
HN would not fit into any definition of centralized discussion forums I would use.
To my mind HN is in that classic genre of single focus communities with a deep history of being the place to go to discuss topic X.
It fits in next to sites like flyertalk, woodweb, bodybuilding.com and a million more.
I think the web was definitely better when every topic had its own little community and if Reddit imploded tomorrow and that happened again I would be thrilled.
Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums
#30We are holding this discussion on a classic, centralized, web1.0 forum which - from my vantage point - is one of the most valuable and enriching forums currently online. What's wrong with HN ? What's wrong with metafilter ? What's wrong with letsrun or doom9 ? The problem is the mistaken notion that these can be big businesses. If you can let go of the economics there is no technical - or usability - hurdle. We know…
You’re having this discussion on a marketing forum.
From the ending of "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy" (discussed most recently at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35855988 )
> The people using your software, even if you own it and pay for it, have rights and will behave as if they have rights. And if you abrogate those rights, you’ll hear about it very quickly.
> That’s part of the problem that the John Hegel theory of community—“community leads to content, which leads to commerce”—never worked. Because lo and behold, no matter who came onto the Clairol chat boards, they sometimes wanted to talk about things that weren’t Clairol products.
> “But we paid for this! This is the Clairol site!” say the sponsors. Doesn’t matter. The users are there for one another. They may be there on hardware and software paid for by you, but the users are there for one another.