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So I guess Gab is a Twitter clone like Voat was supposed to be for Reddit. As an aside, how does Mastodon deals/will deal with the issue? Because it is almost g

So I guess Gab is a Twitter clone like Voat was supposed to be for Reddit. As an aside, how does Mastodon deals/will deal with the issue? Because it is almost guaranteed that the most extremist elements will flock to it (I'm sold on its long term usefulness).

beatgammit 8y ago
Mastodon deals with it my not being popular enough even for trolls ;) In seriousness, isn't it federated like PeerTube? In that case, you'd likely only allow people to link to your network if you trust them, and each network would be responsible for vetting its users. If a particular network becomes a cesspool, you just remove them from your network instead of having to completely overhaul the entire system.
smacktoward 8y ago
Mastodon deals with it by leaving it up to the operators of each instance whether or not to federate with any other instance. If an instance takes a hard turn for the crazy, you can just turn off federation with that instance and you will never hear from it again.
egypturnash 8y ago
So imagine you run a Mastodon instance. You try to keep it a chill place. You start getting lots of reports for not just one, but multiple users on boner.lol. There's just a lot of people there who like pissing people off, it seems. You look up who boner.lol's admin is and they are posting the exact same kind of stuff people are reporting their users for, and rabidly defending users who're being called out on other instances for doing this. So you shrug, and silence the whole instance. Now nobody on boner.lol can talk to anyone on your instance. But what about @niceguy@boner.lol? @niceguy has a lot of friends on your instance, and wasn't doing any of the stuff that got boner.lol silenced. They just thought 'boner.lol' sounded funny. They want to talk to their friends, so they make a new account elsewhere - maybe on your instance if registration is open, maybe elsewhere. Eventually they pretty much move operations to their new account because they just can't talk to anyone they want to with their boner.lol account. This continues for a while. Maybe you toot something about how you silenced boner.lol and some of the other instance admins you're friendly with decide to preemptively silence boner.lol as well. Other admins silence it after their own direct experience with it. Maybe it gets added to one of the lists of Instances You Might Wanna Silence If You Want Things To Be Chill. Eventually the only other instances that don't silence boner.lol are ones that allow the same kind of behavior that got them silenced on your instance. And the admin of boner.lol now has a userbase consisting of nothing but the kind of people who enjoy pissing each other off. Which sure doesn't sound like a very rewarding thing to run, financially or emotionally. There is at least one instance I could name which has run down this path, and is no more.

beatgammit 8y ago

Mastodon deals with it my not being popular enough even for trolls ;) In seriousness, isn't it federated like PeerTube? In that case, you'd likely only allow people to link to your network if you trust them, and each network would be responsible for vetting its users. If a particular network becomes a cesspool, you just remove them from your network instead of having to completely overhaul the entire system.

smacktoward 8y ago

Mastodon deals with it by leaving it up to the operators of each instance whether or not to federate with any other instance. If an instance takes a hard turn for the crazy, you can just turn off federation with that instance and you will never hear from it again.

egypturnash 8y ago

So imagine you run a Mastodon instance. You try to keep it a chill place. You start getting lots of reports for not just one, but multiple users on boner.lol. There's just a lot of people there who like pissing people off, it seems. You look up who boner.lol's admin is and they are posting the exact same kind of stuff people are reporting their users for, and rabidly defending users who're being called out on other instances for doing this. So you shrug, and silence the whole instance. Now nobody on boner.lol can talk to anyone on your instance. But what about @niceguy@boner.lol? @niceguy has a lot of friends on your instance, and wasn't doing any of the stuff that got boner.lol silenced. They just thought 'boner.lol' sounded funny. They want to talk to their friends, so they make a new account elsewhere - maybe on your instance if registration is open, maybe elsewhere. Eventually they pretty much move operations to their new account because they just can't talk to anyone they want to with their boner.lol account. This continues for a while. Maybe you toot something about how you silenced boner.lol and some of the other instance admins you're friendly with decide to preemptively silence boner.lol as well. Other admins silence it after their own direct experience with it. Maybe it gets added to one of the lists of Instances You Might Wanna Silence If You Want Things To Be Chill. Eventually the only other instances that don't silence boner.lol are ones that allow the same kind of behavior that got them silenced on your instance. And the admin of boner.lol now has a userbase consisting of nothing but the kind of people who enjoy pissing each other off. Which sure doesn't sound like a very rewarding thing to run, financially or emotionally. There is at least one instance I could name which has run down this path, and is no more.