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Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

matduggan.com

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Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#111

Post by xigoi »

Angostura wrote: post #41
onion2k wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand. Are they choosing what people can read, or are they choosing what they're willing to federate? No one is stopping people writing and publishing things on federated services. People are only choosing what they're willing to broadcast over the part of the service they run.

Exactly. Each instance is deciding who to federate with and each user is deciding which instance to join

Despite that, Fediverse promoters love to say “It doesn’t matter which instance you join”.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#112

Post by xigoi »

philistine wrote: post #64
darqis wrote: post #33

The Fediverse has one problem, concentration of users on few instances, mastodon.social being the largest. And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated cancel culture. What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand. The irony of writing this in HN is ... whatever the right word is Also, fragmentation and visibility. It's neigh imp…

You are entitled speech, but not to force a theatre company to give you their stage from which their captive audience has to hear it.

Mastodon does not have content promotion. It’s more analogous to the air that transmits your voice than a theater stage.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#113

Post by raffael_de »

handoflixue wrote: post #107
raffael_de wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moderators are a downright scare resource. if you restrict moderation to stuff like gore and porn, then you don't need that many moderators. > When you let people spew hateful things you drive away the people you want in the community can't people just unfollow or block others whose opinions they don't want to see? > Then there's the fact that it takes far more energy to refute bullshit than to spew it there is no…

> if you restrict moderation to stuff like gore and porn, then you don't need that many moderators. Have you ever been involved with moderating even a small subreddit or Discord server? I'm on a server with one moderator and it routinely gets spammed while the guy is asleep. > can't people just unfollow or block others whose opinions they don't want to see? How do I block people BEFORE seeing the opinions I don't wan…

it seems to me that the networking design is flawed. just to give a simple example: whitelisting (only seeing content of friends and followees) versus blacklisting (seeing everything ranked by an algorithm). wouldn't whitelisting already solve most of those issues? that would actually be my preferred modus anyway.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#114

Post by xigoi »

idiotsecant wrote: post #55
darqis wrote: post #33

The Fediverse has one problem, concentration of users on few instances, mastodon.social being the largest. And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated cancel culture. What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand. The irony of writing this in HN is ... whatever the right word is Also, fragmentation and visibility. It's neigh imp…

'cancel culture' is when you decline to federate content users don't want, I guess?

No, it’s when you decline to federate content that some users don’t want (and many do).

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#115

Post by raffael_de »

Arainach wrote: post #109
raffael_de wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moderators are a downright scare resource. if you restrict moderation to stuff like gore and porn, then you don't need that many moderators. > When you let people spew hateful things you drive away the people you want in the community can't people just unfollow or block others whose opinions they don't want to see? > Then there's the fact that it takes far more energy to refute bullshit than to spew it there is no…

> what's there to win? there is nothing to win for anybody. There are ideological battles to be fought by all sorts of parties - convincing groups to hate each other, to support or oppose the governments in power, to spread division and destroy societies. There are trolls who consider it a battle to be won, and the more they succeed the more everyone else leaves the platform. The party currently in control of the Uni…

most of those dynamics are basically just in your head. for example: why would someone care if a troll considers a "battle" won?

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#116

Post by lyu07282 »

znpy wrote: post #69

> So of course media corporations became bargaining chips for the oligarchs' actual businesses. I stopped reading here. This line shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the world and essential blindness to author’s own biases. Media corporations ALWAYS have been bargaining chips to the oligarchs’ actual business, whoever the current politician in power is.

It's a bit ironic that I want to point people so badly to Edward S. Herman and Chomsky's work on the propaganda model to explain why the current war propaganda in the west in support of Operation Epstein's Fury is nothing new.

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

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#117

Post by Arainach »

raffael_de wrote: post #115
Arainach wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's there to win? there is nothing to win for anybody. There are ideological battles to be fought by all sorts of parties - convincing groups to hate each other, to support or oppose the governments in power, to spread division and destroy societies. There are trolls who consider it a battle to be won, and the more they succeed the more everyone else leaves the platform. The party currently in control of the Uni…

most of those dynamics are basically just in your head. for example: why would someone care if a troll considers a "battle" won?

I listed some of the real world consequences already. Allowing disinformation to spread and assuming that people will figure out what's wrong on their own does not scale and does not work.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#118

Post by philistine »

xigoi wrote: post #112
philistine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are entitled speech, but not to force a theatre company to give you their stage from which their captive audience has to hear it.

Mastodon does not have content promotion. It’s more analogous to the air that transmits your voice than a theater stage.

Nope. Air is static and no one has to pay to keep it there. A mastodon server is private property, and needs maintenance and money to stay on. You cannot force a private entity to host your speech. They always have a choice.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#119

Post by xigoi »

philistine wrote: post #118
xigoi wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon does not have content promotion. It’s more analogous to the air that transmits your voice than a theater stage.

Nope. Air is static and no one has to pay to keep it there. A mastodon server is private property, and needs maintenance and money to stay on. You cannot force a private entity to host your speech. They always have a choice.

Mastodon is a federated service, like e-mail. Would you use an e-mail server where the admin reads messages delivered to your inbox and deletes the ones they don’t like?

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#120

Post by Arainach »

raffael_de wrote: post #113
handoflixue wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you restrict moderation to stuff like gore and porn, then you don't need that many moderators. Have you ever been involved with moderating even a small subreddit or Discord server? I'm on a server with one moderator and it routinely gets spammed while the guy is asleep. > can't people just unfollow or block others whose opinions they don't want to see? How do I block people BEFORE seeing the opinions I don't wan…

it seems to me that the networking design is flawed. just to give a simple example: whitelisting (only seeing content of friends and followees) versus blacklisting (seeing everything ranked by an algorithm). wouldn't whitelisting already solve most of those issues? that would actually be my preferred modus anyway.

No, because that puts the effort of fighting bad actors on everyone. It means that every day you have new trolls spewing hate in your comments, and that your users have to constantly keep blocking trolls who follow them (and who recruit other trolls to join them) until they get tired and leave the platform.

This isn't an academic debate, we've been seeing this play out online for at least 30 years. Probably longer - I wasn't around for Usenet's heyday but it wasn't immune either.

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