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User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

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Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#221

Post by slg »

terminalshort wrote: post #205
slg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always comes back to the userbase. I don't know how many times technologists need to learn the lesson that normal people simply don't care about ideological technical principles like decentralization and often actually prefer the benefits of centralized systems like ease of use and typically stronger moderation. And when it comes to social media, businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of…

Correction: businesses are naturally going to end up prioritizing the desires of the majority of their customers And for social media that isn't their userbase.

That remains to be seen. Typically, the userbase is the product for a social media company, not their customers. Which means without a sizable enough userbase, there is nothing to actually sell to their customers. Bluesky has claimed to be different, but they are very much still in the early phase of trying to attract enough users so they need to cater to those users' priorities and decentralization simply isn't a priority that will attract many users.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#222

Post by waterheater »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #178
aucisson_masque wrote: post #125

How can people laugh and make meme at someone else murder ? Like the guy, hate him, but there is something that used to be shared amongst humans, it's that you respect the dead. That's just empathy. Seems like it's gone to the toilet in some part of the usa or maybe it's just weirdos on internet. Either case it's despicable.

> How can people laugh and make meme at someone else murder ? Like the guy, hate him, but there is something that used to be shared amongst humans, it's that you respect the dead. This is extremely wrong. Humans do have an impulse to show respect to the dead, even in some cases dead members of some kind of enemy community. But it is also extremely common and extremely widespread for people to celebrate the deaths of…

Just because something is common and widespread doesn't mean it should continue to be common and widespread, though it will continue to happen due to human nature. And yet, people striving to be constructive and positive won't celebrate the death of a stranger. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a cultural lodestar found globally for a very good reason: cheering the death of others may lead to others hoping to cheer your death, and that potential is enough to significantly curtail offers of constructive and positive assistance from the victims to the perpetrators, leading to a gradual social degradation within the perpetrators. Certainly remember and even memorialize a person's death, but the exaltation of a person's death is a sure path to cultural collapse.

Now, that's assuming people are one unified group. In reality, most people are forced into an "in" group or an "out" group. The "in" group exalts the death of the "out" group member, so the "out" group members must respond in kind. That eventually leads to the degradation of both groups, leaving the "above" and "beyond" groups with the remnants. In turn, the destructive and negative conflict continues.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#223

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

renewiltord wrote: post #91

Interesting. Reddit by contrast is moderation decentralized system centralized.

Not really.

Reddit Inc controls far more of the moderation inside subs than they let on.

Their insane PE higher than nVidiaa isn’t from an AI data deal. It’s a narrative/propaganda control device.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#224

Post by layer8 »

laughing_man wrote: post #173
layer8 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted you, and at the time I believe that the core of the problem is having ranking and reaction mechanisms.

But don't you have to have some sort of ranking system for discoverability?

You really don’t. You discover sites (like this one) and interesting people by word-of-mouth. Within a site (forum or blog), recency, topical categories, sorting and (full-text) searching are sufficient. That’s how the web mostly worked 20+ years ago.

You can have personal rankings, for example people reporting on the most interesting things they’ve recently seen. But these will be individual lists, not aggregated by an algorithm over all user behavior.

You certainly don’t need likes and other reactions, and you also don’t need up- and downvoting of contributions. Those set the wrong incentives and do more harm than good overall, IMO. You do need reporting of problematic content, but only site moderation will see those.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#225

Post by kuschku »

TMWNN wrote: post #212
neilv wrote: post #201

One thing about the Fediverse (Mastodon) is that most people aren't on it. As I found with one marketing experiment, this makes it terrible if your goal is to reach as many consumers as possible in a niche. But HN members who aren't mass-marketing could change that, by moving to the Fediverse -- giving it their endorsement, and network effects. https://joinmastodon.org/

>But HN members who aren't mass-marketing could change that, by moving to the Fediverse -- giving it their endorsement, and network effects. Why? Why should HN members, or anyone else, move to another network with the same kinds of fragmentation and mutual mass bannings (and/or demands for mass bannings) that we are talking about here with Bluesky? See, for example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 >

Because with mastodon, you can just run your own server, and continue using the network.

Between my single-user-instance and Facebook's billion-user Threads, ActivityPub is genuinely decentralised.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#226

Post by Karrot_Kream »

viraptor wrote: post #217
beardedetim wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the reason I left the "main" social media and what keeps me from engaging too much with Reddit/HN or any of the other new hotness like Mast, nostr, BlueSky, etc: it's just rage baiting or karma farming

Mastodon is pretty much anti-that. No algorithm. If you don't like something, you just don't follow it. Nothing defaults to the instance/global timeline either and you're free to mute anything.

This hasn't been my observation. Yeah you can mute whatever you want (you can on Twitter and Bluesky also) but the HOA tendencies of Mastodon servers are alive and well. If you're a very online type of person and "live and die" by online social currents then no problem, but for others I'm not sure.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#227

Post by kuschku »

astrange wrote: post #109
Arathorn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mjolnir is designed to apply decentralised public blocklists - i.e. you pick which banlists to apply; there are a bunch published by different people (matrix.org, the matrix 'community moderation effort', etc). Admittedly moderators do share lists (so that if #archlinux bans you, others might pick up the ban), but there's no intrinsic centralisation. https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/msc2313/propos... is…

BlueSky also has this, but it works poorly because people use blocklists as a form of harassment, or else take over existing lists and add their enemies to it.

Not really, because there's only one AppView and you can't unsubscribe from the lists they dislike.

Wheras with Matrix, you can run your own server, with your own rules, and federate with the rest of the network.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#228

Post by totallymike »

ogou wrote: post #50
packetlost wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When speech is violence, allowing someone a platform is akin to being party to and supporting .

Speech is not violence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#229

Post by DaSHacka »

Devasta wrote: post #190
nozzlegear wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like Vance at all, but him being on the same social media platform as you isn't the same thing as him showing up uninvited to your formula one conversation.

Sure, but banning him sends a signal to people who do like them that they also aren't welcome.

Exactly the GP's point though, that's essentially sending an indicator to 50% of the population that they're not welcome on the platform. Do you really think a platform that performs actions like that will be successful? In practice, it obviously just creates echo chambers where fringe beliefs are painted as the common majority, because all dissenting views are silenced.

Re: User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality

#230

Post by DaSHacka »

mustache_kimono wrote: post #79
tptacek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No good will come of a fulsome litigation of Singal but it's fair to say that he doesn't go out of his way to avoid these controversies. Sort of like Fredrik deBoer, he's one of journalism's answers to the concept of edgelordery. People who vocally wish he was less influential would do well to remember how much juice they've been giving him.

> he doesn't go out of his way to avoid these controversies. Science journalist covering the science of perhaps the most salient social issue of our time? Don't get me wrong -- there are other really important stories which aren't being covered as well as they should be, but Singal's beat would seem to be at least as important as... most anything linked from HN on a daily basis. > People who vocally wish he was less…

> That's how Singal makes those with opposing views look ridiculous.

Quite frankly, he didn't have to do anything. They did that allll on their own.

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