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I would argue that abuse protection has been one of the main drivers toward centralized systems. Many goals of fully decentralized morality-neutral platforms a
by honorious 8y ago
I would argue that abuse protection has been one of the main drivers toward centralized systems.
Many goals of fully decentralized morality-neutral platforms are in conflict with the expectations of people to be protected from harm while using the internet. Centralized platforms get closed to providing such a protection (even if flawed).
There is tons of research in decentralized methods for protecting against abuse (huge research topic in the 2000), yet not much has really worked (Bitcoin solves SOME, but it still suffers of many other abuse problems).
Small-scale federated solutions (where all participants know each other) are potentially better on that front, but I don't think they will be profoundly different from solutions where control is centralized. There will need to be coordination in response to problems, hard to see how different parts of the system might implement profoundly different policies about content, anonymity without splitting the group.
So, my conclusion is that solutions with centralized control are dominating the market not because a few evil corporations are conspiring to steal the control away from the free people, but because they DO provide a much safer environment for regular people to do regular things, despite all downside.
- DenisM 8y agoEmail is a working example of federated network, and it’s profoundly different from Facebook. And not any more abusive than Twitter.
- bunderbunder 8y agoTwitter is pretty abusive. And email used to be even worse. It didn't get decent until it people started flocking toward centralized solutions like GMail, which (coincidentally or not) did a pretty decent job of reining in spam and viruses.
- syshum 8y agoThe industry got good at that, Google is not a magical spam filter in fact in some ways it is not even really that great at all. There are many many ways to achieve the same or better results for spam protection they by using google
- tim333 8y agoSuch as? I switched to gmail mostly for the spam filtering.
- dumbfoundded 8y agoIt's federated but certainly not completely decentralized. Spam filters in a way have become "a protection (even if flawed)". With email, you can still send an email to anyone but if you send it from a personal server versus gmail, it's much less likely to be read.
- CaptSpify 8y ago* citation needed That's not been my experience at all. I've been running my own email server for years and I've yet to hear about an email being blocked. I know many other people who run their own email server just fine.
- catamorphismic 8y agoIndeed, I've been successfully running my email server for the past five years and mail has no problem reaching gmail users. I think people have just become defeatist.
- thekyle 8y agoI would argue Email is heavily abused, much more than Twitter. It's just not very noticeable if you have a good spam filter.
- malvosenior 8y agoI don't think "regular people" are concerned about being harmed on social media. The story around abuse comes from very high profile people that receive the social media equivalent of what we used to call hate mail. When a regular person signs up to Twitter they don't even get any followers let alone harassment. Abuse only happens when you reach a suitably large audience to enable it. Most people will never have that kind of attention. I think centralization's domination in tech is due mostly to technical and business reasons. Centralized search is fast, centralized content is fast and high quality, discovery is easier...
- DanBC 8y ago> Abuse only happens when you reach a suitably large audience to enable it. Most people will never have that kind of attention. Are you a straight white male?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- malvosenior 8y ago> Are you a straight white male? Does it matter? Please feel free to respond to my comment and not my identity.
- DanBC 8y ago> Does it matter? Yes, because it's only straight white cis-men who say things like "Abuse only happens when you reach a suitably large audience to enable it."
- malvosenior 8y agoI normally wouldn't feed the trolls, but no I'm not all of those things you list so I guess I prove your point incorrect.
- 8y ago
- needlepont 8y agoI would argue that 'abuse' is the most significant characteristic of an open system. What is one persons abuse is absolute freedom to another. The proficient design subsystems to isolate themselves from the 'abuse' and attract customers of their design. These become walled gardens. Eventually the closed system becomes oppressive. As many others note it is a sort of dialetic that can be traced in historical political movements and other human endeavor.