171–180 of 214 posts
How is the infrastructure and bandwidth paid for?
The media is hosted on regular web servers and it says you can host it anywhere. It seems like most of the videos are hosted here: https://nostr.build/
Which is a paid service backed by AWS S3
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The interesting question is: do you think that the majority of people don't see this side of the internet because of how effective the centralized control and policing is, or just because the majority of people are not interested in seeing this content in the first place? Both! Most people don't want to see beheading videos and would be very upset if one came across their Youtube recommendations. Fortunately, YouTu…
The point that I am trying to make and I am not sure you are getting: if we take the decentralized system as the Internet and the different social Networks as "relays with autonomy over their own content", isn't that already an example that that each subnetwork gets to enforce the policies that their own communities value? The problem I am taking with your view is that shows a not-so-subtle hint of totalitarianism. I…
Yes. I agree that this model can, and does, work. Mastodon and old school web forums were the examples I gave upthread where they do work. And I believe these work because forum owners / mastodon server owners have the capability and necessary incentives to moderate content posted on their subnetworks. As I understand Nostr's design (relays / clients), and its explicit citation that Mastodon's model is bad because "3rd party (server hosts) can censor you", I do not believe your success model is applicable. Nostr relays lack the incentive and accountability needed to moderate content much the same way Bitcoin miners do.
> The problem I am taking with your view is that shows a not-so-subtle hint of totalitarianism. It tries to use the abuses caused by people with freedom to justify that we all should lose our liberties (or accept that global subjugation to a common set of rules as inevitable.
Holy slippery slope, batman! Global Totalitarianism! Believe it or not, there exists a middle ground between total "LIBERY!" freedom! Moderate yourselves, nerds! and endorsing a Global Cabal of Media Reviewers.
What I completely reject is that the primary problem with YouTube, Facebook, and the like is that they're arbitrarily censoring "views they don't like". The handful of examples of this I've ever seen have been comically obvious censorable material, or actual very difficult decisions that it's completely reasonable to understand why the decision was made. I have many other concerns about these mega-tech companies that I find infinitely more troubling than their current content moderation practices. At the end of the day, these companies are accountable. If nothing else, you have the option to leave! See Twitter. Embracing decentralization for the sake of decentralization only complicates this accountability, potentially to the point where no-one has any appreciable accountability (a la Bitcoin, again).
What I also reject is the implication that this is a simple problem. The Paradox of tolerance is a thing, and it's just plain complicated. And not something decentralization—or any other technology—can solve.
> To repeat: you keep arguing like the enthusiasts of decentralized platforms are "anti-censorship", when in fact the fight is about claiming back some sense of autonomy and agency to let people be able to do the moderation/curation themselves (or to someone closer to them who understands their values and social context better)
I think you and I actually have a lot in common in that respect. I'm a big Mastodon fan, run my own #HOMELAB to reclaim ownership of my data, do the whole POSSE thing, etc. I'm all about all of this stuff. What I reject is this perverse idea that the biggest problem with big tech is that they're just haphazardly censoring ideas they don't like (it's always conservative ideas). It's little more than a conspiracy theory that's led to virtually every social media platform today happily platforming actual Nazis (because of the free speech, you know?) and forbidding such taboo things as sex workers, critics of the CEO, etc. These are decisions. And platforms like Flame exist for basically one reason: to further propagate the conspiracy that big tech (like the mainstream media, colleges & universities, etc.) are just completely and irrationally biased against poor old conservatives who just want to, like, share their opinions, man.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point that I am trying to make and I am not sure you are getting: if we take the decentralized system as the Internet and the different social Networks as "relays with autonomy over their own content", isn't that already an example that that each subnetwork gets to enforce the policies that their own communities value? The problem I am taking with your view is that shows a not-so-subtle hint of totalitarianism. I…
> The point that I am trying to make and I am not sure you are getting: if we take the decentralized system as the Internet and the different social Networks as "relays with autonomy over their own content", isn't that already an example that that each subnetwork gets to enforce the policies that their own communities value? Yes. I agree that this model can, and does, work. Mastodon and old school web forums were the…
And this issue is not just about moderation. Let's say that you have been a model citizen on a server, but one of the moderators woke up in a bad mood, found something they don't like about you and kicks you out. Now you are locked out of your account and can not even migrate it away. FYI: not an hypothetical, this happened with some of my friends who were working with crypto.
> the biggest problem with big tech is that they're just haphazardly censoring ideas they don't like
To me, the problem is that they are too big, plain and simple. Too big, too powerful and too far removed from their actual customers to even care about the individual customer or anything that slightly deviates from the norm. I don't like them much like I don't like the EU-style of bureaucratic government.
What (I hope) nostr is trying to build is something where the centralization is outright impossible first, then come out with the mechanisms to tackle content curation/moderation.
Heads up, I have "block newly registered domains" configured in my NextDNS site, so I can't resolve flare.pub. For the future, might be good to register the domain a little while before the launch to avoid this.
Wasn't aware this is a thing. Thanks for the tip.
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The replies to your comment point out what is technically feasible but not how it could actually work at any scale. Part of the “job” that software like FB and YT and Gmail for that matter perform for users is to make so-called graphic content a non-issue.
Let's be fair, though - most people using a censorship-resistant decentralized video platform are explicitly doing so to share and access "graphic content." Or at the very least consciously don't mind encountering such content on free speech absolutist principles alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's so off putting I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. I wouldn't even curiously browse a landing page of an otherwise interesting project beyond the point I notice that something is mildly "cryptocurrency-adjacent", or it becomes obvious that it has involvement from devs who also enjoy working on blockchains. Thanks for the heads up.
Can I ask why? Beyond the "crypto grift," a blockchain-based social network might offer some benefits: - permissionless - (no moderation) - means for auto solvency - (we are not the product) - interoperability - (multiple clients, forks, etc.) - privacy
"no moderation", massive problem. I'm not hosting my (admittedly limited) content on a platform that lets my videos get posted in proximity to scams, CSAM etc. If I'm going to ask people to go to somewhere to see my videos (again, admittedly limited) then I'm not going to want them to be stumbling across that stuff.
YouTube isn't getting it right, they're allowing bad shit (poor quality, scams, excessive shrieking) and taking people down for spurious DMCA takedowns, but the answer isn't "no moderation at all", that's not the problem.
As a user I don't sign up to somthing because it allows anything, doesn't take anything down, I sign up beacause it has the things I want to watch. I'm not a character in cryptonomicon or snow crash.