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This is the problem of decentralized, too open systems (aka anarchy): it enables terrorism, child porn, violent hate groups, organized crime and other extremist

This is the problem of decentralized, too open systems (aka anarchy): it enables terrorism, child porn, violent hate groups, organized crime and other extremists and criminals. There needs to be a reputation system and stronger limits to gradually give a user more access. Also, if they're required to pay for what they use (micropayment) to keep resources on servers, they're less likely to post illegal junk. Otherwise, crazy jerks will turn a free service into a Tragedy of the Commons, and everyone loses. We need more user-supported, non-profit sensible social media, productivity and other web apps to replace the for-profit and the wild-west ones that don't scale so well without major work. That being said, free often becomes junk because there's not the focus and professionalism to make something cool. TL;DR - free doesn't scale without meaningful accountability

miguelrochefort 8y ago
Filtering must be inbound, not outbound. Users should be able to broadcast whatever they want, including highly illegal stuff. Users should be able to filter whatever they receive, based on their individual preferences.
- paulcole 8y ago
  > Users should be able to broadcast whatever they want, including highly illegal stuff Sorry, but I disagree here. Even in something that’s decentralized, the user relies on someone and that someone most definitely has the right (and ethical responsibility) to stop the spread of “highly illegal stuff.”
  - miguelrochefort 8y ago
    "Highly illegal stuff" is relative, in time.and space. How do you suggest we enforce that?
    - paulcole 8y ago
      If I’m making a decision to delete something based on it’s legality, I refer to the laws that apply to me. Not that tricky.
Todamont 8y ago
I see it as a problem of moderation, which is notoriously tricky to do fairly, for any individual, and when you get a roomfull of techno-libertarians together it becomes insurmountable to reach consensus on the process. My takeaway is that federated networks need a federated moderation system, and they will become segmented when the "good" actors essentially ban / disconnect from the "bad" actors or just the uninitiated. So moderation systems maybe need to be centralized to some degree to be effective. I've reached out to the CEO of YCombinator, and the Youth Pastor of YCombinator about this, I'm looking forward to hearing their responses. I've also reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the group that oversees the Free Software Support Network of which the Diaspora Foundation is a part of, and I'll be urging them to take action against Diaspora Foundation also. I have just completed a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, letting them know about Diaspora's little CP problem. My buddy from the Wall Street Journal seems interested now too :)
- stevenicr 8y ago
  I've been thinking a lot about moderating with online communications, decentralized and federated makes the solutions even more complex. It's not easy to filter when the people you want to filter have some tech knowledge. I've been dealing with that for years. One bad person in a country near this one has access to thousands of VPNs, and is simply unstoppable. I've been kicking around the idea of having multiple filter options for each server and each user. I am very interested in how others would tackle this. Particularly interested in blocking / filter options with matrix and similar systems. I am imagining a block servers list, block cidr list, and a set of human moderators that can 'add on the fly' to a list they control - these lists being set to block by default. With options to whitelist individual users or ips on a server basis and per user basis. I'd like to give each user an option to turn off these filters all at once, or whitelist different servers for example. I also want to have a page showing for example, a blocklist of servers, and a blocklist of users, and a list of the moderators, like a list of nightclub 'bouncers' - so that people can make comments about them - if one bouncer does block lots of bad things, but also blocked a few people who had differing politics for example, it would be nice to have a way to see and discuss that and give people options to have a different bouncer blocking their message box. There's some of my random thoughts on the issue, I'd like to see what others have come up with. When exploring rocket chat and similar, what I have seen so far is that these comm platforms are working with teams of non hostile users in mind and defending against the kind of issues initially described here is not really something any portal is prepared to handle well. Yet, hopefully. I have been asking about different mod tools and how to implement multiple layers for the various threats / issues. I also think sometimes people in a group need to be set to not see new users to the group by default, and only after a certain amount of time can a newer user be seen by the main others in a group - things like that.

miguelrochefort 8y ago

Filtering must be inbound, not outbound. Users should be able to broadcast whatever they want, including highly illegal stuff. Users should be able to filter whatever they receive, based on their individual preferences.

paulcole 8y ago
> Users should be able to broadcast whatever they want, including highly illegal stuff Sorry, but I disagree here. Even in something that’s decentralized, the user relies on someone and that someone most definitely has the right (and ethical responsibility) to stop the spread of “highly illegal stuff.”
- miguelrochefort 8y ago
  "Highly illegal stuff" is relative, in time.and space. How do you suggest we enforce that?
  - paulcole 8y ago
    If I’m making a decision to delete something based on it’s legality, I refer to the laws that apply to me. Not that tricky.

Todamont 8y ago

I see it as a problem of moderation, which is notoriously tricky to do fairly, for any individual, and when you get a roomfull of techno-libertarians together it becomes insurmountable to reach consensus on the process. My takeaway is that federated networks need a federated moderation system, and they will become segmented when the "good" actors essentially ban / disconnect from the "bad" actors or just the uninitiated. So moderation systems maybe need to be centralized to some degree to be effective. I've reached out to the CEO of YCombinator, and the Youth Pastor of YCombinator about this, I'm looking forward to hearing their responses. I've also reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the group that oversees the Free Software Support Network of which the Diaspora Foundation is a part of, and I'll be urging them to take action against Diaspora Foundation also. I have just completed a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, letting them know about Diaspora's little CP problem. My buddy from the Wall Street Journal seems interested now too :)

stevenicr 8y ago
I've been thinking a lot about moderating with online communications, decentralized and federated makes the solutions even more complex. It's not easy to filter when the people you want to filter have some tech knowledge. I've been dealing with that for years. One bad person in a country near this one has access to thousands of VPNs, and is simply unstoppable. I've been kicking around the idea of having multiple filter options for each server and each user. I am very interested in how others would tackle this. Particularly interested in blocking / filter options with matrix and similar systems. I am imagining a block servers list, block cidr list, and a set of human moderators that can 'add on the fly' to a list they control - these lists being set to block by default. With options to whitelist individual users or ips on a server basis and per user basis. I'd like to give each user an option to turn off these filters all at once, or whitelist different servers for example. I also want to have a page showing for example, a blocklist of servers, and a blocklist of users, and a list of the moderators, like a list of nightclub 'bouncers' - so that people can make comments about them - if one bouncer does block lots of bad things, but also blocked a few people who had differing politics for example, it would be nice to have a way to see and discuss that and give people options to have a different bouncer blocking their message box. There's some of my random thoughts on the issue, I'd like to see what others have come up with. When exploring rocket chat and similar, what I have seen so far is that these comm platforms are working with teams of non hostile users in mind and defending against the kind of issues initially described here is not really something any portal is prepared to handle well. Yet, hopefully. I have been asking about different mod tools and how to implement multiple layers for the various threats / issues. I also think sometimes people in a group need to be set to not see new users to the group by default, and only after a certain amount of time can a newer user be seen by the main others in a group - things like that.