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I think the problem is the expectation of people that someone else do the filtering for them. I.e. "I don't want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone

I think the problem is the expectation of people that someone else do the filtering for them. I.e. "I don't want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone else should remove it from all the sites I visit". Which obviously leads to conflicting requirements once you have more than one person and those people disagree on what they want to see and don't want to see. The only reasonable solution is to host everything, modulo requirements by law, and give users the tools to locally filter out content en masse. In a decentralized system you also skip the law requirements since you cannot enforce multiple incompatible jurisdictions at the platform level, individual users will be responsible for enforcing it on their own nodes, similar how all you can do when accidentally encountering child porn is to clear your cache.

djrogers 9y ago
> I.e. "I don't want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone else should remove it from all the sites I visit". I don’t think that’s always the mindset. Isn’t it reasonable for people to have the mindset of “I want to go to sites that don’t have content that I find objectionable”? This way websites can decide which group of people they want to cater to.
- the8472 9y ago
  The context of the discussion is large websites acting as platforms. Their users are bound to have conflicting views about what's "objectionable". So when the moderation mechanism is deletion instead of letting users just filter then the website has to preferentially treat one group instead of being a platform for everyone.
  - chii 9y ago
    But the deeper issue is that done people don't want certain content to even exist, and won't be satisfied with just a filter (even thought they can't tell the difference between filter and deletion).
averagewall 9y ago
I don't think Youtube censors extremist content because "I" don't want to see it. It's because "I" don't want anyone else to see it! There's no use me filtering my own videos if my goal is to limit what other people see.
- chii 9y ago
  This is at the heart of the issue: should platforms bow down and allow some users to dictate what others are allowed to see? Or should a platform remain neutral against anything (which means potential back lash)?
vidarh 9y ago
The problem on these distributed platforms is not filtering what people see, but filtering what people host or allow to transit their network connections. > In a decentralized system you also skip the law requirements since you cannot enforce multiple incompatible jurisdictions at the platform level, individual users will be responsible for enforcing it on their own nodes, similar how all you can do when accidentally encountering child porn is to clear your cache. But that's the thing: You don't skip it. You spread it to every user. They both have to deal with whether or not they are willing to host the material and whether or not it is even legal for them. How many of us sympathise with the idea of running a Tor exit node, for example, but avoid it because we're worried about the consequences? These platforms will always struggle with this unless they provide ways for people to feel secure that the content that is hosted on their machines is content they don't find too offensive, and/or that traffic that transit their networks is not content they find too offensive. Consider e.g. darknet efforts like cjdns which are basically worthless because their solution to this was to require people find "neighbours" they can convince to let them connect. Which basically opens the door to campaigns to have groups you disapprove of disconnected by harassing their neighbours and their neighbours neighbours, just the same as you can go to network providers on the "open" internet.
- the8472 9y ago
  First of all, not all p2p networks operate like Tor. For example bittorrent and ipfs only host content you look at. So hosters could largely self-select the content they replicate. Secondly, there are several tiers of content. a) stuff that is illegal to host b) stuff that is not illegal but that you find so objectionable that you don't even want to host it c) stuff that you don't like but doesn't bother you too much d) stuff you actually want to look at. I posit that a) and b) are fairly small fractions and the self-selection mechanism of "things that I looked at" will reduce that fraction even further. And even if you are on a network where you randomly host content you never looked at encryption can provide you some peace of mind (of the obliviousness kind) because you cannot possibly know or expected to know what content you're hosting. Add onion routing and the person who hosts something can't even be identified. If Viewer A requests something (blinded) through Relay B from Hoster C then B cannot know what they're forwarding and C cannot know what they're hosting. If neither you nor others can know what flows through or is stored on your node it would be difficult to mount pressure against anyone to disconnect. For the illegal content, especially in oppressive environments, you could install a Voluntary Compliance(tm) government blocklist on public-facing nodes and still opt to run an internal node in your network that uses encrypted connections to retrieve things hosted in other countries you're not supposed to see. ---- Anyway, back to filtering for decentralized content hosting. I think once you have a network it is a matter of managing expectations. You can't make content magically disappear. Platforms like youtube, twitter, facebook etc. have raised the false expectation that you can actually make things go away by appealing to The Authority and it will be forever gone. In reality things continue to exist, they just move into some more remote corners of the net. Once expectations become more aligned with reality again and people know they can only avoid looking at content but not make it non-existent things boil down to being able to filter things out at the local level.
likelynew 9y ago
> modulo requirements by law Which law?
- bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  German law against Pro-Nazi stuff would be an obvious example. Then child pornography. 'Normal porn' in some cultures... the thing is law requirements do not generally allow you just to clear your cache of the offending content, the company is not allowed to show it.

djrogers 9y ago

> I.e. "I don't want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone else should remove it from all the sites I visit". I don’t think that’s always the mindset. Isn’t it reasonable for people to have the mindset of “I want to go to sites that don’t have content that I find objectionable”? This way websites can decide which group of people they want to cater to.

the8472 9y ago
The context of the discussion is large websites acting as platforms. Their users are bound to have conflicting views about what's "objectionable". So when the moderation mechanism is deletion instead of letting users just filter then the website has to preferentially treat one group instead of being a platform for everyone.
- chii 9y ago
  But the deeper issue is that done people don't want certain content to even exist, and won't be satisfied with just a filter (even thought they can't tell the difference between filter and deletion).

averagewall 9y ago

I don't think Youtube censors extremist content because "I" don't want to see it. It's because "I" don't want anyone else to see it! There's no use me filtering my own videos if my goal is to limit what other people see.

chii 9y ago
This is at the heart of the issue: should platforms bow down and allow some users to dictate what others are allowed to see? Or should a platform remain neutral against anything (which means potential back lash)?

vidarh 9y ago

The problem on these distributed platforms is not filtering what people see, but filtering what people host or allow to transit their network connections. > In a decentralized system you also skip the law requirements since you cannot enforce multiple incompatible jurisdictions at the platform level, individual users will be responsible for enforcing it on their own nodes, similar how all you can do when accidentally encountering child porn is to clear your cache. But that's the thing: You don't skip it. You spread it to every user. They both have to deal with whether or not they are willing to host the material and whether or not it is even legal for them. How many of us sympathise with the idea of running a Tor exit node, for example, but avoid it because we're worried about the consequences? These platforms will always struggle with this unless they provide ways for people to feel secure that the content that is hosted on their machines is content they don't find too offensive, and/or that traffic that transit their networks is not content they find too offensive. Consider e.g. darknet efforts like cjdns which are basically worthless because their solution to this was to require people find "neighbours" they can convince to let them connect. Which basically opens the door to campaigns to have groups you disapprove of disconnected by harassing their neighbours and their neighbours neighbours, just the same as you can go to network providers on the "open" internet.

the8472 9y ago
First of all, not all p2p networks operate like Tor. For example bittorrent and ipfs only host content you look at. So hosters could largely self-select the content they replicate. Secondly, there are several tiers of content. a) stuff that is illegal to host b) stuff that is not illegal but that you find so objectionable that you don't even want to host it c) stuff that you don't like but doesn't bother you too much d) stuff you actually want to look at. I posit that a) and b) are fairly small fractions and the self-selection mechanism of "things that I looked at" will reduce that fraction even further. And even if you are on a network where you randomly host content you never looked at encryption can provide you some peace of mind (of the obliviousness kind) because you cannot possibly know or expected to know what content you're hosting. Add onion routing and the person who hosts something can't even be identified. If Viewer A requests something (blinded) through Relay B from Hoster C then B cannot know what they're forwarding and C cannot know what they're hosting. If neither you nor others can know what flows through or is stored on your node it would be difficult to mount pressure against anyone to disconnect. For the illegal content, especially in oppressive environments, you could install a Voluntary Compliance(tm) government blocklist on public-facing nodes and still opt to run an internal node in your network that uses encrypted connections to retrieve things hosted in other countries you're not supposed to see. ---- Anyway, back to filtering for decentralized content hosting. I think once you have a network it is a matter of managing expectations. You can't make content magically disappear. Platforms like youtube, twitter, facebook etc. have raised the false expectation that you can actually make things go away by appealing to The Authority and it will be forever gone. In reality things continue to exist, they just move into some more remote corners of the net. Once expectations become more aligned with reality again and people know they can only avoid looking at content but not make it non-existent things boil down to being able to filter things out at the local level.

likelynew 9y ago

> modulo requirements by law Which law?

bryanrasmussen 9y ago
German law against Pro-Nazi stuff would be an obvious example. Then child pornography. 'Normal porn' in some cultures... the thing is law requirements do not generally allow you just to clear your cache of the offending content, the company is not allowed to show it.