7 ms·

Mastodon Is Like Twitter Without Nazis, So Why Are We Not Using It?

52 points by jboynyc 10y ago

ryanx435 10y ago
So it's twitter with less content.
- vnchr 10y ago
  Less Nazi content, in particular
  - dv_dt 10y ago
    But is this by integral design, or just by current circumstance?
  - busterarm 10y ago
    I wasn't aware that Twitter, or really anyone in 2017, had a Nazi problem.
    - smacktoward 10y ago
      Did... did you sleep through 2016? If so, you might want to sit down. I've got a lot of bad news.
      - busterarm 10y ago
        Calling them Nazis is misguided and self-defeating. Whoever the they you think are Nazis are not Nazis. The NSDAP and its related organizations have been dead since 1945. You may want to take another look at Godwin's law.
        cholantesh 10y ago
        I mean neo-nazis are largely interested only in the racial policies of the NSDAP anyway, so it's not that far off base.
- INTPenis 10y ago
  Less users would be more appropriate, given the title. The more users, the more diverse people you'll run into. But I thought the article described it in the wrong way. Mastodon was down. Well one instance was down for the author because some big names had signed up on it. The emphasis should be on it being decentralized. A modern day IRC where any community can run their own nodes and communicate with other nodes. Running big communities is a challenge regardless of technology, just see Freenode for example. I remember running IRC Networks back in the day, it required time, money and organisation. Sometimes even donations.
blowski 10y ago
First time I've heard of Mastodon, but I really hope it takes off. Social networks are now too integrated into modern life to be completely owned by private corporations.
daliwali 10y ago
Since it's decentralized that means there wouldn't be an effective way to ban someone from the network without consensus. Anyone, "Nazi" or not, would be free to post offensive content without a central authority policing users as is the case with Twitter. I don't think this is actually a solution that certain users and most advertisers want.
- pbtflakes 10y ago
  Mastodon.social would ban them, and if other instances don't police content sufficiently then Mastodon.social doesn't have to federate with them.
  - busterarm 10y ago
    That doesn't sound very decentralized to me.
    - pbtflakes 10y ago
      Other instances of Mastodon can make their own decisions in terms of banned content, and other instances can choose to not federate with them.
      - busterarm 10y ago
        That's kind of my point. You end up with the option of 1) it's centralized. Everyone only cares about who Mastodon.social federates with. How it's built to work doesn't actually matter. 2) It's centralized. Users wrestle control from Mastodon.social and everyone cares about who some other server federates with. 3) It's a balkanized mess. You spend all your time worrying about who you're federated with so that your content and the content you want to see become accessible. 4) It's decentralized, but nobody really bothers with banning anyone anyway, because it leads to the other scenarios and they are worse.
  - daliwali 10y ago
    It would defeat the purpose of federation if there's a different server for each political persuasion. Why bother with federation if you don't want to see anything you disagree with? Each server would be its own hugbox.
zephyrfalcon 10y ago
"We" are not using it for the same reason nazis are not using it: because hardly anyone's there. It needs critical mass first. Once that happens, nazis/trolls/etc will find their way there too, I'm afraid.
- guelo 10y ago
  Nazis are banned by policy.
  - FreeFull 10y ago
    I doubt that Twitter's policy is very nazi-friendly either.
    - rmc 10y ago
      Depends. You can take free speech very seriously and hence not want to ban Nazis. For example the ACLU went to the US Supreme Court to support the National Socialist Party of America to march in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...
      - jubalfh 10y ago
        Not every country is the United States of America, and freedom of speech is not exclusively defined by amendments to an American constitution. You can ban the nazi symbols & language and still have freedom of speech.
        dogma1138 10y ago
        I'm pretty sure that "banning Nazi's" is a catch all phrase meaning banning anyone whose opinions we do not agree with above a certain level / token candidates. Twitter has a pretty well rounded TOS and they tend to go out of their way to block/ban people even when they haven't violated the TOS/CoC when there is sufficient pressure. That said I don't understand why people want to turn their social networks to echo chambers, if you only having discussions that do not make you feel uncomfortable or challenge your views you often do not hold discussions worth having.
mod 10y ago
If we use it, the nazis will come. PS: this reads just like a big old advertisement. PPS: the scrolljacking is real on this page.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  VICE lost me as a reader when they overhauled their sites and made them shitty to unusable. I would have stuck around using reader view, but their writing quality has gone down again too.
- rmc 10y ago
  > If we use it, the nazis will come. Mastodon.social explicitly bans nazis: > The following types of content are explicitly disallowed and will result in revocation of access to the service: > Sexual depictions of children > Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or Nazi symbolism > Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism
metaphorm 10y ago
Twitter addicted journalists have started to perceive their tweeting as one of the most important aspects of their job. This is not good for journalism or society. You know what a better solution to Twitter problems would be than "clean" Twitter? No Twitter. Just drop it. This is a problem not a solution.
- LordWinstanley 10y ago
  Twitter seems to have become an alternative to Reuters or AP for most journalists the days. Even major newspapers and news organisations seem to 'back up' their articles with numerous quoted tweets —as if the half-baked shite spewing out of Twitter in response to World events was some kind of confirmation of a story's authenticity.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    it's pretty disturbing. I wish I had better insight into the causes of this but from where I sit (an outsider in a different industry) it looks like a noxious combination of race-to-the-bottom, intellectual and professional laziness, lowered standards, groupthink, and institutional corruption.
Shivetya 10y ago
how unoriginal, yet another story conflating Trump with Nazis. how easily is HN manipulated
- wehere1 10y ago
  sup nazi
  - sctb 10y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantively like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- cremno 10y ago
  Where does the article say that? The US president is mentioned because there seem to be people tired of hearing about him and to be honest, US politics are really toxic - even without him.
Grue3 10y ago
There's a popular adage that technology only becomes useful when it starts being used for porn. The reason is that, when the technology was thought up, the idea was not to use it for porn, but for something else. However the fact that the porn industry has independently found the technology useful, despite it not being targeted at them at all, shows the true potential of the technology. The same can be said about social networks, except swap porn for nazis.
Neliquat 10y ago
Who is worried about nazis? Really? Any why take any default political stance as a medium. About as smart as voat's strategy of going the opposite direction.
mindcrash 10y ago
Nazi, noun -- A person with a opinion "we" do not like/agree with. See also: libertarian, classical liberal, conservative. Update: -3 points for mocking the world view of, apparently, a shit ton of people these days? Damn...
- synicalx 10y ago
  Mustn't disagree with the hivemind, it bites
jitl 10y ago
Why is this flagged?
LordWinstanley 10y ago
So, you complain about Twitter's inherent lack of freedom, then offer an alternative which "bans nazis"? Given the frequency with which internet debates end up invoking Godwin's Law, that sounds even worse than what it's trying to replace. Who decides who's a nazi? I'm also confused by the distinction (or relationship) between this and GNUsocial. The article seems to suggest that Mastodon is an instance of (or at least compatible with) GNUsocial. The Mastodon FAQ seems to suggest it's a completely separate and incompatible thing. FWIW, there are already several longer established GNUsocial-based almost-clones of Twitter out there, offering more than Mastodon seems to. Personally, I use Quitter, to scratch my FOSS 'twittering' itch: https://quitter.no https://quitter.no
- progval 10y ago
  Mastodon uses OStatus to communicate between instances, so it's totally compatible with GNU Social. I checked it myself.
LordWinstanley 10y ago
What I would like to see from any of these FOSS alternatives to Twitter is a way to import your existing Twitter archive. I don't know if it's colossal arrogance, or colossal stupidity that makes so many developers launch their "Alternative to Hugely Successful Product X" without giving people any way of bringing across their existing "Product X" content, that they may have spent years creating.
ksrm 10y ago
Why on earth was this flagged?

52 points by jboynyc 10y ago

ryanx435 10y ago

So it's twitter with less content.

vnchr 10y ago
Less Nazi content, in particular
- dv_dt 10y ago
  But is this by integral design, or just by current circumstance?
- busterarm 10y ago
  I wasn't aware that Twitter, or really anyone in 2017, had a Nazi problem.
  - smacktoward 10y ago
    Did... did you sleep through 2016? If so, you might want to sit down. I've got a lot of bad news.
    - busterarm 10y ago
      Calling them Nazis is misguided and self-defeating. Whoever the they you think are Nazis are not Nazis. The NSDAP and its related organizations have been dead since 1945. You may want to take another look at Godwin's law.
      - cholantesh 10y ago
        I mean neo-nazis are largely interested only in the racial policies of the NSDAP anyway, so it's not that far off base.
INTPenis 10y ago
Less users would be more appropriate, given the title. The more users, the more diverse people you'll run into. But I thought the article described it in the wrong way. Mastodon was down. Well one instance was down for the author because some big names had signed up on it. The emphasis should be on it being decentralized. A modern day IRC where any community can run their own nodes and communicate with other nodes. Running big communities is a challenge regardless of technology, just see Freenode for example. I remember running IRC Networks back in the day, it required time, money and organisation. Sometimes even donations.

blowski 10y ago

First time I've heard of Mastodon, but I really hope it takes off. Social networks are now too integrated into modern life to be completely owned by private corporations.

daliwali 10y ago

Since it's decentralized that means there wouldn't be an effective way to ban someone from the network without consensus. Anyone, "Nazi" or not, would be free to post offensive content without a central authority policing users as is the case with Twitter. I don't think this is actually a solution that certain users and most advertisers want.

pbtflakes 10y ago
Mastodon.social would ban them, and if other instances don't police content sufficiently then Mastodon.social doesn't have to federate with them.
- busterarm 10y ago
  That doesn't sound very decentralized to me.
  - pbtflakes 10y ago
    Other instances of Mastodon can make their own decisions in terms of banned content, and other instances can choose to not federate with them.
    - busterarm 10y ago
      That's kind of my point. You end up with the option of 1) it's centralized. Everyone only cares about who Mastodon.social federates with. How it's built to work doesn't actually matter. 2) It's centralized. Users wrestle control from Mastodon.social and everyone cares about who some other server federates with. 3) It's a balkanized mess. You spend all your time worrying about who you're federated with so that your content and the content you want to see become accessible. 4) It's decentralized, but nobody really bothers with banning anyone anyway, because it leads to the other scenarios and they are worse.
- daliwali 10y ago
  It would defeat the purpose of federation if there's a different server for each political persuasion. Why bother with federation if you don't want to see anything you disagree with? Each server would be its own hugbox.

zephyrfalcon 10y ago

"We" are not using it for the same reason nazis are not using it: because hardly anyone's there. It needs critical mass first. Once that happens, nazis/trolls/etc will find their way there too, I'm afraid.

guelo 10y ago
Nazis are banned by policy.
- FreeFull 10y ago
  I doubt that Twitter's policy is very nazi-friendly either.
  - rmc 10y ago
    Depends. You can take free speech very seriously and hence not want to ban Nazis. For example the ACLU went to the US Supreme Court to support the National Socialist Party of America to march in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...
    - jubalfh 10y ago
      Not every country is the United States of America, and freedom of speech is not exclusively defined by amendments to an American constitution. You can ban the nazi symbols & language and still have freedom of speech.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        I'm pretty sure that "banning Nazi's" is a catch all phrase meaning banning anyone whose opinions we do not agree with above a certain level / token candidates. Twitter has a pretty well rounded TOS and they tend to go out of their way to block/ban people even when they haven't violated the TOS/CoC when there is sufficient pressure. That said I don't understand why people want to turn their social networks to echo chambers, if you only having discussions that do not make you feel uncomfortable or challenge your views you often do not hold discussions worth having.

mod 10y ago

If we use it, the nazis will come. PS: this reads just like a big old advertisement. PPS: the scrolljacking is real on this page.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
VICE lost me as a reader when they overhauled their sites and made them shitty to unusable. I would have stuck around using reader view, but their writing quality has gone down again too.
rmc 10y ago
> If we use it, the nazis will come. Mastodon.social explicitly bans nazis: > The following types of content are explicitly disallowed and will result in revocation of access to the service: > Sexual depictions of children > Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or Nazi symbolism > Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism

metaphorm 10y ago

Twitter addicted journalists have started to perceive their tweeting as one of the most important aspects of their job. This is not good for journalism or society. You know what a better solution to Twitter problems would be than "clean" Twitter? No Twitter. Just drop it. This is a problem not a solution.

LordWinstanley 10y ago
Twitter seems to have become an alternative to Reuters or AP for most journalists the days. Even major newspapers and news organisations seem to 'back up' their articles with numerous quoted tweets —as if the half-baked shite spewing out of Twitter in response to World events was some kind of confirmation of a story's authenticity.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  it's pretty disturbing. I wish I had better insight into the causes of this but from where I sit (an outsider in a different industry) it looks like a noxious combination of race-to-the-bottom, intellectual and professional laziness, lowered standards, groupthink, and institutional corruption.

Shivetya 10y ago

how unoriginal, yet another story conflating Trump with Nazis. how easily is HN manipulated

wehere1 10y ago
sup nazi
- sctb 10y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantively like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
cremno 10y ago
Where does the article say that? The US president is mentioned because there seem to be people tired of hearing about him and to be honest, US politics are really toxic - even without him.

Grue3 10y ago

There's a popular adage that technology only becomes useful when it starts being used for porn. The reason is that, when the technology was thought up, the idea was not to use it for porn, but for something else. However the fact that the porn industry has independently found the technology useful, despite it not being targeted at them at all, shows the true potential of the technology. The same can be said about social networks, except swap porn for nazis.

Neliquat 10y ago

Who is worried about nazis? Really? Any why take any default political stance as a medium. About as smart as voat's strategy of going the opposite direction.

mindcrash 10y ago

Nazi, noun -- A person with a opinion "we" do not like/agree with. See also: libertarian, classical liberal, conservative. Update: -3 points for mocking the world view of, apparently, a shit ton of people these days? Damn...

synicalx 10y ago
Mustn't disagree with the hivemind, it bites

jitl 10y ago

Why is this flagged?

LordWinstanley 10y ago

So, you complain about Twitter's inherent lack of freedom, then offer an alternative which "bans nazis"? Given the frequency with which internet debates end up invoking Godwin's Law, that sounds even worse than what it's trying to replace. Who decides who's a nazi? I'm also confused by the distinction (or relationship) between this and GNUsocial. The article seems to suggest that Mastodon is an instance of (or at least compatible with) GNUsocial. The Mastodon FAQ seems to suggest it's a completely separate and incompatible thing. FWIW, there are already several longer established GNUsocial-based almost-clones of Twitter out there, offering more than Mastodon seems to. Personally, I use Quitter, to scratch my FOSS 'twittering' itch: https://quitter.no https://quitter.no

progval 10y ago
Mastodon uses OStatus to communicate between instances, so it's totally compatible with GNU Social. I checked it myself.

LordWinstanley 10y ago

What I would like to see from any of these FOSS alternatives to Twitter is a way to import your existing Twitter archive. I don't know if it's colossal arrogance, or colossal stupidity that makes so many developers launch their "Alternative to Hugely Successful Product X" without giving people any way of bringing across their existing "Product X" content, that they may have spent years creating.

ksrm 10y ago

Why on earth was this flagged?