6 ms·

How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? It mostly makes moderation (or censorship) impossible.

by d--b 7y ago

faitswulff 7y ago
Works out quite well if you want to get out of the business of moderating.
izzydata 7y ago
I get the feeling that is the idea. They want a "neutral" platform where they have no responsibility.
Porthos9K 7y ago
Moderation's easy in a decentralized model: run your own server, and refuse to federate with servers that are run by (or used by) people you consider to be assholes. Server admins can easily band together to contain (or isolate) "bad" servers as most of the Fediverse has done with Gab.
rvrabec 7y ago
Same concern - I'm working on getting some info removed from mastodon. it's terrifying how hard it is to get someone (volunteer mods) to actually remove something... This sort of case makes me an advocate for centralized access to moderate/regulate/also be accountable... but then if there's this magic backdoor to data access and removal...?
rmtech 7y ago
> How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? There will be a space where different people and organizations can build filters that rate information for veracity and other traits. Over time these filters will develop a track record. People will be able to filter their feed through such filters. Centralized orgs can already do this, but they make a central and opaque choice about it. This means that there is a lot of pressure from various interest groups to make sure that the hidden filter is biased towards their favored viewpoint, and the users cannot really see what the result of this fight is. It's like how it probably wouldn't be a good idea to have just one news organization that served the whole US.
jstanley 7y ago
I'd like to see moderation work like adblocking. You subscribe to whatever moderation feed you like, and it blocks tweets that the moderators decide to block. If you don't like what the moderators are doing, you can select a different moderation feed, or start your own. This way we decouple the moderation from the platform.
- banads 7y ago
  I like this idea. Another feature that could be helpful for users who are eary of group think thought bubbles is to have some kind of analytics on the most common types of words, phrases, and topics that the moderator censors.
rmtech 7y ago
> It mostly makes moderation (or censorship) impossible. Making total censorship impossible is mostly congruent with the goals of society in my opinion. Censorship has done immense damage, e.g. Lysenkoism in the USSR (to pick a particular example). However there is still the option for users to voluntarily opt in to certain kinds of filters. Most likely most people would voluntarily opt in to a filter that rejects child porn, for example. It's an open question whether a decentralized system with filters would lead to better overall environment, but I think it's worth trying.
buboard 7y ago
I m surprised every time i see people here asking for the evil that is censorship. Dorsey wants a decentralized system exactly because he won't be held liable for not censoring people. It makes sense business-wise and it's a win-win for humanity. Twitter has become a trigger-happy-people-fest because each group knows they can weaponize censorship against each other. With systems that are uncensored , nobody complaints, e.g. people don't make a fuss that email is not censorious enough
- rhcom2 7y ago
  > It makes sense business-wise and it's a win-win for humanity. Does it make sense business-wise? What business will want to be on a system that has no moderation? It's just asking for your brand to be accidentally or intentionally associated with undesirable things.
  - buboard 7y ago
    google is in the email business tons of businesses send promotional emails , even though they know the protocol is also used for sending porjn
    - rrix2 7y ago
      And the only reason businesses still use email is Google's development of advanced and almost effective content moderation.
      - antpls 7y ago
        The difference between Google's moderation and Twitter's moderation is, in the Google case, that the user is in control of what is "spam" and what is not (and can still consult the "spam" if any).
      - buboard 7y ago
        you mean spam filtering, which is different from moderation. google won't censor "hateful emails"
banads 7y ago
>How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? How is this not a laughable expectation? You may as well expect them to "solve evil".

How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? It mostly makes moderation (or censorship) impossible.

by d--b 7y ago

How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? It mostly makes moderation (or censorship) impossible.

faitswulff 7y ago

Works out quite well if you want to get out of the business of moderating.

izzydata 7y ago

I get the feeling that is the idea. They want a "neutral" platform where they have no responsibility.

Porthos9K 7y ago

Moderation's easy in a decentralized model: run your own server, and refuse to federate with servers that are run by (or used by) people you consider to be assholes. Server admins can easily band together to contain (or isolate) "bad" servers as most of the Fediverse has done with Gab.

rvrabec 7y ago

Same concern - I'm working on getting some info removed from mastodon. it's terrifying how hard it is to get someone (volunteer mods) to actually remove something... This sort of case makes me an advocate for centralized access to moderate/regulate/also be accountable... but then if there's this magic backdoor to data access and removal...?

rmtech 7y ago

> How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? There will be a space where different people and organizations can build filters that rate information for veracity and other traits. Over time these filters will develop a track record. People will be able to filter their feed through such filters. Centralized orgs can already do this, but they make a central and opaque choice about it. This means that there is a lot of pressure from various interest groups to make sure that the hidden filter is biased towards their favored viewpoint, and the users cannot really see what the result of this fight is. It's like how it probably wouldn't be a good idea to have just one news organization that served the whole US.

jstanley 7y ago

I'd like to see moderation work like adblocking. You subscribe to whatever moderation feed you like, and it blocks tweets that the moderators decide to block. If you don't like what the moderators are doing, you can select a different moderation feed, or start your own. This way we decouple the moderation from the platform.

banads 7y ago
I like this idea. Another feature that could be helpful for users who are eary of group think thought bubbles is to have some kind of analytics on the most common types of words, phrases, and topics that the moderator censors.

rmtech 7y ago

> It mostly makes moderation (or censorship) impossible. Making total censorship impossible is mostly congruent with the goals of society in my opinion. Censorship has done immense damage, e.g. Lysenkoism in the USSR (to pick a particular example). However there is still the option for users to voluntarily opt in to certain kinds of filters. Most likely most people would voluntarily opt in to a filter that rejects child porn, for example. It's an open question whether a decentralized system with filters would lead to better overall environment, but I think it's worth trying.

buboard 7y ago

I m surprised every time i see people here asking for the evil that is censorship. Dorsey wants a decentralized system exactly because he won't be held liable for not censoring people. It makes sense business-wise and it's a win-win for humanity. Twitter has become a trigger-happy-people-fest because each group knows they can weaponize censorship against each other. With systems that are uncensored , nobody complaints, e.g. people don't make a fuss that email is not censorious enough

rhcom2 7y ago
> It makes sense business-wise and it's a win-win for humanity. Does it make sense business-wise? What business will want to be on a system that has no moderation? It's just asking for your brand to be accidentally or intentionally associated with undesirable things.
- buboard 7y ago
  google is in the email business tons of businesses send promotional emails , even though they know the protocol is also used for sending porjn
  - rrix2 7y ago
    And the only reason businesses still use email is Google's development of advanced and almost effective content moderation.
    - antpls 7y ago
      The difference between Google's moderation and Twitter's moderation is, in the Google case, that the user is in control of what is "spam" and what is not (and can still consult the "spam" if any).
    - buboard 7y ago
      you mean spam filtering, which is different from moderation. google won't censor "hateful emails"

banads 7y ago

>How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? How is this not a laughable expectation? You may as well expect them to "solve evil".