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The Federated App Problem

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Re: The Federated App Problem

#171

Post by madeofpalk »

cubefox wrote: post #150
madeofpalk wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the point of federation though. It allows for different standards of moderation to actually exist. If you don't like the way a server moderates, then don't join it (or transfer to another server, which you can mostly do with Mastodon). Hell, run your own mastodon server (or use a "mastodon-as-a-service" service) which is pretty trivial for micro instances. The idea that there is one globally correct way to mo…

I don't get why some people are so anxious to block alleged hate speech and supposed misinformation. Social networking sites already allow users to choose their own community simply by chosing whom they follow. Without federation. Why do we need additional segregation and polarization beyond that?

Existing social networks do a poor job though of actually allowing users to choose their own community. For Twitter specifically algorthmic timeline, replies, likes, and retweets will often put content from people you don't follow right infront of you. You can maintain your timeline more by unfollowing and blocking, but this is a bunch of effort you must do on a more individual level.

Mastodon's approach allows you to outsource a part of that by just joining an instance that doesn't even allow "alleged hate speech" into your timeline. That's the appeal of that.

But the point of federated Mastodon is not to have a platform that is solely moderated less than Twitter.

It's that:

- it's not twitter (or rather, it's a "twitter clone" that's non-commercial, not reliant on a single entity, has a degree of data portability built in - decentralised)

- it can allow for the spectrum of moderation styles to exist. The majority of bigger "mainstream" instances are probably going to opt to moderate similarly-ish to social networks, but this doesn't negate the other reasons for mastodon to exist. You can have instances that have an even stricter moderation standard, or even looser.

But at the end you don't need to get why one person prefers a network in one way, because federation means different ways can happily exist, and you chose what you prefer. Just don't be surprised if other people aren't enthusiastic about the people you hang out with.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#172

Post by madeofpalk »

MikusR wrote: post #120
donio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Email is often a good analogy for questions like these: Why do you pick one email service over the other? Maybe you think the domain is cool. Maybe you heard that they are reliable or have features that others don't. Maybe your university, company or other community you belong to runs its own service. Or you decide to host your own. O…

But gmail is not blocked by hotmail or yahoo. You can send and receive from different providers.

Gmail definitely blocks email hosts.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#173

Post by assbuttbuttass »

mariusor wrote: post #85
assbuttbuttass wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make posts on a particular community (through your home instance), and federation means all the other instances will mirror your post

The concept that you get wrong is that nobody mirrors content. Servers receive the content from the one of the original content creator, if they exist in its recipients list. Public content usually is distributed to all servers that the original server knows about. However it's always a PUSH of the content.

How is that different from mirroring? I just meant the same content is available on multiple domains.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#174

Post by cubefox »

JohnFen wrote: post #168
cubefox wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the possibility of highly illegal content justifies a block list which perhaps includes mainly blocking unwanted political opinions? That argument sounds familiar.

I think the point is that the blocklist is optional. If you don't like it, don't use it. Or make your own that is more directly tuned to your tastes.

It's the default, and I guess people mostly won't notice if it blocks too much. So the effect would be pretty similar.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#175

Post by copperx »

asnyder wrote: post #119
copperx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a problem or cargo culting? I certainly thought it was a problem, but I know a sysadmin that runs two small businesses's email on prem and he says that deliverability, even to major providers, has never been a problem, as long as you set up everything right.

I don't know how cargo culting figures into this. Nobody is setting up cardboard boxes and thinking it's a mail server :). What does it mean to set everything up right? Out of the box postfix, sendmail, dovecat, etc., no longer generally work, even with DKIMs, and other necessary domain verifications. I have heard of some admins opening cases with some of the large hosts to ensure their mail goes through, but seeing…

> I don't know how cargo culting figures into this.

Hosting email at big provider as a default option because it is "well known" that self-hosting email is unviable can be considered cargo culting.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#176

Post by cubefox »

madeofpalk wrote: post #171
cubefox wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why some people are so anxious to block alleged hate speech and supposed misinformation. Social networking sites already allow users to choose their own community simply by chosing whom they follow. Without federation. Why do we need additional segregation and polarization beyond that?

Existing social networks do a poor job though of actually allowing users to choose their own community. For Twitter specifically algorthmic timeline, replies, likes, and retweets will often put content from people you don't follow right infront of you. You can maintain your timeline more by unfollowing and blocking, but this is a bunch of effort you must do on a more individual level. Mastodon's approach allows you t…

> For Twitter the algorthmic timeline means who you follow has such a small impact on who and what you see. And even if you switch to the non-default cronological timeline,

"Non-default" sounds too harsh here. It's literally a big tab saying "Following". It's only default for the very first time you log into Twitter, afterward it will remember your decision (it will be "default").

> , replies, likes, and retweets will often put content from people you don't follow into your timeline.

No only retweets will show in the Following tab. Which seems reasonable, as retweets were historically done via copy&paste. The other things aren't the case anymore for the "following" tab since Musk introduced it. (By the way, after pg himself asked him to add that possibility!)

I agree that Facebook is way worse in terms of moderation, but Mastodon doesn't seem an improvement over Twitter, quite the opposite. Those moderators are moderating for users, when this should be simply left to their decision of whom to follow. People or posts will be hidden from users who would not have hidden those themselves.

The decentralized approach sounds cool initially, but it leads only to even more segregation / filter bubbles / echo chambers. As if the choice of whom you follow didn't cause enough of that.

I think that's a real issue. Political polarization increases since the amount of media channels increases. When there were only a handful of newspapers or TV channels, they couldn't be too politically biased, otherwise they would scare away most other people. This changed when the number of media outlets increased. And with social media, every user now is able to create their own little reinforcement chamber.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#177

Post by cubefox »

burnished wrote: post #163
cubefox wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why some people are so anxious to block alleged hate speech and supposed misinformation. Social networking sites already allow users to choose their own community simply by chosing whom they follow. Without federation. Why do we need additional segregation and polarization beyond that?

You're acting like the current methods aren't greeted with the same cries. To answer your question; because they are demonstrably required. Different subreddits already moderate to different standards - why do you insist that each community needs to fit in as part of the same whole?

Because Reddit isn't a social networking site where you create your own community by following people. In Reddit other people create those communities, because Reddit is a forum.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#178

Post by cubefox »

currency wrote: post #166
cubefox wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why some people are so anxious to block alleged hate speech and supposed misinformation. Social networking sites already allow users to choose their own community simply by chosing whom they follow. Without federation. Why do we need additional segregation and polarization beyond that?

I might talk about allegations and suppositions about an individual's behavior until I've seen evidence, but the hate and disinfo groups aren't imaginary. Groups that promote hate speech and misinformation do so by invading other communities and being disruptive. Brigading and doxxing have been their tools for a long time. Personally, I've seen that breaking up groups that promote hate speech and misinformation helps…

The problem is that what is considered "hate speech" and "misinformation" is often very subjective. How would someone even "invade" other people's communities? Everyone chooses their own timeline after all.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#179

Post by bawolff »

valdiorn wrote: post #159
bawolff wrote: post #102

Honestly these all seem like solvable albeit hard problems. Learning curve is a ux problem. Yes federated is a bit harder, but i think this is more the general problem that open source is terrible at ux, especially when it doesn't have sonething to copy, not a fundamental federated issue. (Cross-instance) Authentication - definitely hard, but seems solvable as well. Whether with fancy crypto or maybe some federated o…

> SEO - meh, who cares. Do people really use these sites for googling. Given that I, and probably half of hacker news, preface most of my searches with "site:reddit.com", I'd say Yes. Definitely Yes.

I guess it depends a bit on the site. I can't imagine prefacing my search with site:twitter.com

Re: The Federated App Problem

#180

Post by cubefox »

eggnet wrote: post #51
memefrog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's misinformation? Things you don't think are true? Things the instance admin doesn't think are true? Things officially deemed untrue by the State? Or by the UN/WHO? Is is considered Misinformation if it was deemed Untrue in the past by State Officials but is now Official State Policy? We have always been at war with Eastasia. We have always recommended the wearing of masks. We have always seriously considered th…

Signal to noise ratio. When the admin of a server thinks the ratio of another server is too low, the admin will block it. What's the definition of too low? Up to the admins of that server.

That's the problem. It's enough when people choose themselves whom to follow.
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