4 ms·

The solution is to anonymize and decentralize the internet, and we've been saying it for decades.

geofft 7y ago
That's a slightly different solution from just decentralizing the internet, which 'saurik advocated above. (I'm in favor of decentralization on principle, to be clear, I'm just not sure it solves this problem.) The problem with anonymizing the internet is that it prevents forming real-world communities. If you're forced to remain hidden so that you escape scrutiny, the breastfeeding mother has no way of finding others in her city beyond her three existing friends, because none of them want to be known as the dissident who supports breastfeeding. There's still value to the online communities, yes, but this seems like a significant abdication of the power of the internet to help society. The problem with decentralizing the internet without anonymizing it is that any legal restrictions remain. If there's a law that says that Twitter can't kick breastfeeding mothers off their website without taking legal responsibility, that same law will say that my Mastodon instance must federate with every alt-right-but-toeing-the-line Mastodon instance if I don't want to take legal responsibility for everything that shows up on my Mastodon instance.
- quadrifoliate 7y ago
  >...that same law will say that my Mastodon instance must federate with every alt-right-but-toeing-the-line Mastodon instance if I don't want to take legal responsibility for everything that shows up on my Mastodon instance. This seems highly unlikely to me. What if you are running a different version of the codebase or something from those instances? v2.0.1special. Even leaving aside constraints like that, volume of inbound traffic, etc. are direct costs to federation with other instances that I doubt laws would be willing to force you to pay. I wonder if there are examples of this having been done in the past. Microsoft's antitrust case is the closest that comes to mind, but they were operating from an absolutely dominant standpoint at the time. If Mastodon/ActivityPub ever reaches that level, I'd consider it...a win?
  - geofft 7y ago
    The law doesn't have to force you to pay it - it just has to say, either federate with everybody or nobody. All it needs to do is say, if you're accepting posts from other people, you need to do so in a non-discriminatory way. (Providers like Twitter would love this law because it would kill decentralized systems. In fact this would allow Jack to "decentralize" Twitter https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106 while making sure no decentralized systems run by the powerless can compete. Everyone else can technically run a decentralized system, but Twitter is the only one worth using. It's the perfect regulatory capture.) Sure, you can probably get by for a bit by just happening to fail to peer with Nazis, but you would immediately lose the ability to make a public shared block list with reasoning, a la https://github.com/dzuk-mutant/blockchain/blob/master/list/list.md https://github.com/dzuk-mutant/blockchain/blob/master/list/l... . You'd also have trouble successfully peering with non-Nazi instances - if you publish the protocol changes in v2.0.1special so other reasonable people can federate with you, the Nazis will just apply those patches too.
shadowgovt 7y ago
That didn't make the star-chans better; quite the opposite in fact.
- krapp 7y ago
  It did from a certain point of view, which is kind of an unspoken point. Many of the people who argue that allowing anything but absolute and unfettered freedom of speech is a slippery slope towards fascism are not doing so from a neutral or academic point of view. Rather, they want to push the Overton window of societal acceptance for ideas currently considered intolerable by mainstream society by guaranteeing exposure to certain forms of political speech and propaganda.
cookiecaper 7y ago
The technical underpinnings of the internet are decentralized well enough. The reality is that these aren't technical problems, and any technical workaround will ultimately become circular. We have to come up with the necessary legal and social innovations that will allow people to cope.
franga2000 7y ago
It is already both (for the most part). The problem is that people will always prefer centralization. From shopping malls, capital cities, credit cards... to Internet platforms, the unavoidable fact is that centralization makes things easier, cheaper and more convenient. Even federated-by-design technologies like email have slowly turned into mostly centralized services. Just having to pick an email provider is too much work for most people. Gmail is good and free, so everyone uses that. As long as servers cost money and big corps can offer free things to get user share, decentralised services are doomed to never become mainstream.

That's a slightly different solution from just decentralizing the internet, which 'saurik advocated above. (I'm in favor of decentralization on principle, to be clear, I'm just not sure it solves this problem.) The problem with anonymizing the internet is that it prevents forming real-world communities. If you're forced to remain hidden so that you escape scrutiny, the breastfeeding mother has no way of finding others in her city beyond her three existing friends, because none of them want to be known as the dissident who supports breastfeeding. There's still value to the online communities, yes, but this seems like a significant abdication of the power of the internet to help society. The problem with decentralizing the internet without anonymizing it is that any legal restrictions remain. If there's a law that says that Twitter can't kick breastfeeding mothers off their website without taking legal responsibility, that same law will say that my Mastodon instance must federate with every alt-right-but-toeing-the-line Mastodon instance if I don't want to take legal responsibility for everything that shows up on my Mastodon instance.

quadrifoliate 7y ago
>...that same law will say that my Mastodon instance must federate with every alt-right-but-toeing-the-line Mastodon instance if I don't want to take legal responsibility for everything that shows up on my Mastodon instance. This seems highly unlikely to me. What if you are running a different version of the codebase or something from those instances? v2.0.1special. Even leaving aside constraints like that, volume of inbound traffic, etc. are direct costs to federation with other instances that I doubt laws would be willing to force you to pay. I wonder if there are examples of this having been done in the past. Microsoft's antitrust case is the closest that comes to mind, but they were operating from an absolutely dominant standpoint at the time. If Mastodon/ActivityPub ever reaches that level, I'd consider it...a win?
- geofft 7y ago
  The law doesn't have to force you to pay it - it just has to say, either federate with everybody or nobody. All it needs to do is say, if you're accepting posts from other people, you need to do so in a non-discriminatory way. (Providers like Twitter would love this law because it would kill decentralized systems. In fact this would allow Jack to "decentralize" Twitter https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106 while making sure no decentralized systems run by the powerless can compete. Everyone else can technically run a decentralized system, but Twitter is the only one worth using. It's the perfect regulatory capture.) Sure, you can probably get by for a bit by just happening to fail to peer with Nazis, but you would immediately lose the ability to make a public shared block list with reasoning, a la https://github.com/dzuk-mutant/blockchain/blob/master/list/list.md https://github.com/dzuk-mutant/blockchain/blob/master/list/l... . You'd also have trouble successfully peering with non-Nazi instances - if you publish the protocol changes in v2.0.1special so other reasonable people can federate with you, the Nazis will just apply those patches too.

shadowgovt 7y ago

That didn't make the star-chans better; quite the opposite in fact.

krapp 7y ago
It did from a certain point of view, which is kind of an unspoken point. Many of the people who argue that allowing anything but absolute and unfettered freedom of speech is a slippery slope towards fascism are not doing so from a neutral or academic point of view. Rather, they want to push the Overton window of societal acceptance for ideas currently considered intolerable by mainstream society by guaranteeing exposure to certain forms of political speech and propaganda.

cookiecaper 7y ago

The technical underpinnings of the internet are decentralized well enough. The reality is that these aren't technical problems, and any technical workaround will ultimately become circular. We have to come up with the necessary legal and social innovations that will allow people to cope.

franga2000 7y ago

It is already both (for the most part). The problem is that people will always prefer centralization. From shopping malls, capital cities, credit cards... to Internet platforms, the unavoidable fact is that centralization makes things easier, cheaper and more convenient. Even federated-by-design technologies like email have slowly turned into mostly centralized services. Just having to pick an email provider is too much work for most people. Gmail is good and free, so everyone uses that. As long as servers cost money and big corps can offer free things to get user share, decentralised services are doomed to never become mainstream.