4 ms·

Me hearing about the fediverse for the first time: "Man this thing looks really promising, just think of the potential of a social network unhindered by the da

Me hearing about the fediverse for the first time: "Man this thing looks really promising, just think of the potential of a social network unhindered by the dark machinations of the googtwitface !" Me after ten minutes on the public feed of mastodon.social: "So do the furries post for the sex workers or is it the other way around or what ?"

stevenicr 7y ago
I've been thinking about these kinds of things for some time and starting to talk about it. I think we need an open source set of 'bouncers / blockers' - that people can use, perhaps best as a chrome / ffx extension? That blocks content from various portals or individual posts or posters that you may not want to see. Different people want to censor different things, and some want to censor the same things less and some more.. so by have an open source set of blocker bots people can discussion the blocking lists.. people can pick and choose what they see / not see.. That's on a basic beginning - I could see them also getting into 'unsubsbrcibe to stuff from server A and mastadon B' can take it further.. Since cloudflare came out as censor friendly - I've given up hope the big players will be all 'open info utopia' ever again. I think the best we can hope for is to get individual blocking bots and open up the web more. Otherwise we will have more censoring across the board and will succumb to whichever lowest common denominator of whoever gets to be in charge and make new rules. This way some people can choose to filter sex workers and not furries and some can choose to censor furries but not sex.. Of course I am sure many people will choose some broad auto-block and stick with that, making their internet more like fbook's daycare.. but having transparent options will certainly have many people turning off the 'safesearch' and explore the whole world, or larger parts of it. You are right in that we may need more tools for individual users to take control in this expanded universe.. but things like 'peter's ad block list' kind of things can be more beneficial than depending on MostPopular Mastadon Server being pushed to choose what to block for the masses and what to let through and the whack-o-mole that tends to create. If they are open and clone-able / editable - some might want peter-and-pauls-block-more lists.. and some may like furfriendlyButnotPron lists.. and I hope many more options for choose your own censor.. rather than having them chosen for us as most have succumbed to. My current random thoughts on the subject - hope others chime in to make it better and more of a possibility instead of just napkin notes.
- seemslegit 7y ago
  I don't have anything against either furries or sex workers being there, just that between this and half of the public feed being in languages other than English the "what is this all about ?" experience is rather deterring. Two basic things they could do is add some categorization and have users opt-in to topics for their public feed and limit the posts shown to English plus the languages that can be deduced from the user-agent data - it is after all one of the few legitimate purposes it can be used for.
  - kick 7y ago
    Why not just find people you like on it first and then use it? Joining a social network you know nobody on seems weird. Also, the Public Timeline is your local instance's. My local instance has no users that speak different languages than I do, so the timeline is without content I don't understand. The Whole Known Network goes way too fast to be of use, but it too is mostly filled with English speakers (albeit mostly non-desirable sorts).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - yborg 7y ago
    Mastodon client can filter on language. Hashtags are a thing, most clients can search/filter on them. The pond is tiny, so certain non-mainstream communities that were driven out of other "real" platforms (i.e. platforms that are trying to sell you something) are a much higher percentage of the feed. But it's more or less just like Twitter, loudmouths tend to dominate, and 95% of the feed is garbage. Instance homing is really the biggest problem Fedi has right now, instances are hard to characterize without camping them for some time, they're mostly small hence the loudmouth problem, and stability is an issue, they still come and go frequently. One of the problems with anarchy is that it's hard to manage.
- nirui 7y ago
  I was having my 2 cents thought on the topic as well, my conclusion is: A shared blocking list (Or a blockchain system, hehe) can only be used as the last resort. Systems like such already been developed, for example there is one for Twitter made by third-party called "Twitter Block Chain" (https://github.com/satsukitv/twitter-block-chain https://github.com/satsukitv/twitter-block-chain). Yes, it can block "unwanted" posters and bots when a correct list is given, but it could also sometime block innocent accounts when somebody is been mistakenly added to the list (Or that somebody just simply changed their behavior for the better). For such system to work, the maintainer of the list must be trustworthy, which is the hardest part and almost always falls apart. Add to the injury, it can also be very hard for others to detect mistakes sneaked into the list, as the list may contains more than 10,000 items, makes it impossible to be completely verified manually. And what to do if a mistake is indeed discovered? Maintain an unblock list to automatically request the user to unblock? Now user has to maintain their own "Yes I manually blocked this guy" list to counter act the automatic one. My suggestion is: Yes, you can use a shared block list if there is no other way (The Twitter case). But since Mastadon is open sourced, maybe let's try something else first while still can? Please give this a little thought: Can a system be designed in such way that makes it really hard for their user to accidentally come across some unwanted posts (without having to block the poster)?
rapnie 7y ago
And when choosing your following wisely your timeline will just contain what you want it to (e.g. not a furry in sight). This is not so different to Twitter.
- seemslegit 7y ago
  This isn't a problem when choosing who to follow, just with the first impression someone gets of the public feed.
hkt 7y ago
Same here. After the subsequent ten minutes I concluded that moderating a distributed social network is likely to be impossible. I'd be pretty open to a non-federated social network provided it was a co-op or a foundation running it along a wiki style funding model (eg annual mass begging).
- sneak 7y ago
  Nobody who you aren’t following can put things into your feed. That’s all the moderation you need; you need not be concerned with the content of the timelines of those you do not follow.
  - hkt 7y ago
    Except there are often default feeds of public posts from the community. So, actually..
- seemslegit 7y ago
  Moderation of one's own feed is not the problem here, the problem is that a community like this is likely to remain perennial if the first impression of it is wierding out the average would-be user.
lainsoykaf 7y ago
Mastodon.social is sadly one of the worst instances to join. Onboarding / Selecting a good instance is the hardest problem for the fediverse.
- grishka 7y ago
  The problem isn't even that. There's no global account catalog you could search. Thus, you have no way of knowing who of the people you know is on there already. Asking everyone if they know about Mastodon and which instance they're on isn't the answer. I have an idea about making a DHT out of instance servers, but at this point it's purely theoretical. If it does work though, you'll be able to easily import your existing friend lists from centralized services. Could use either their APIs or — better — the GDPR-mandated export feature.
  - FalconSensei 7y ago
    > Asking everyone if they know about Mastodon and which instance they're on isn't the answer. Ironically, the only way to do that now is posting on twitter, asking people to reply with their mastodon accounts
sneak 7y ago
Now think about all the places where that doesn’t happen, and think of all the censorship that is being imposed on harmless true self-expression. That’s a feature, not a bug. Being able to post without fear of getting ToS’d and losing your entire audience is one of the major benefits of decentralized systems. Now we just need to figure out how to solve for overzealous admins. I think the default for AP should become “bring your own domain”, even as a leaf user, so that you can seamlessly migrate instances if, for example, your web host or local admin takes issue with something you say.
FalconSensei 7y ago
As someone already mentioned, mastodon.social is not the best entry point. Which is ironic, because it should be. But even if you find a cool instance, it's hard to find people there to follow or conversations you want to join, because you can only search for hashtags. #and #people #dont #write #like #this

stevenicr 7y ago

I've been thinking about these kinds of things for some time and starting to talk about it. I think we need an open source set of 'bouncers / blockers' - that people can use, perhaps best as a chrome / ffx extension? That blocks content from various portals or individual posts or posters that you may not want to see. Different people want to censor different things, and some want to censor the same things less and some more.. so by have an open source set of blocker bots people can discussion the blocking lists.. people can pick and choose what they see / not see.. That's on a basic beginning - I could see them also getting into 'unsubsbrcibe to stuff from server A and mastadon B' can take it further.. Since cloudflare came out as censor friendly - I've given up hope the big players will be all 'open info utopia' ever again. I think the best we can hope for is to get individual blocking bots and open up the web more. Otherwise we will have more censoring across the board and will succumb to whichever lowest common denominator of whoever gets to be in charge and make new rules. This way some people can choose to filter sex workers and not furries and some can choose to censor furries but not sex.. Of course I am sure many people will choose some broad auto-block and stick with that, making their internet more like fbook's daycare.. but having transparent options will certainly have many people turning off the 'safesearch' and explore the whole world, or larger parts of it. You are right in that we may need more tools for individual users to take control in this expanded universe.. but things like 'peter's ad block list' kind of things can be more beneficial than depending on MostPopular Mastadon Server being pushed to choose what to block for the masses and what to let through and the whack-o-mole that tends to create. If they are open and clone-able / editable - some might want peter-and-pauls-block-more lists.. and some may like furfriendlyButnotPron lists.. and I hope many more options for choose your own censor.. rather than having them chosen for us as most have succumbed to. My current random thoughts on the subject - hope others chime in to make it better and more of a possibility instead of just napkin notes.

seemslegit 7y ago
I don't have anything against either furries or sex workers being there, just that between this and half of the public feed being in languages other than English the "what is this all about ?" experience is rather deterring. Two basic things they could do is add some categorization and have users opt-in to topics for their public feed and limit the posts shown to English plus the languages that can be deduced from the user-agent data - it is after all one of the few legitimate purposes it can be used for.
- kick 7y ago
  Why not just find people you like on it first and then use it? Joining a social network you know nobody on seems weird. Also, the Public Timeline is your local instance's. My local instance has no users that speak different languages than I do, so the timeline is without content I don't understand. The Whole Known Network goes way too fast to be of use, but it too is mostly filled with English speakers (albeit mostly non-desirable sorts).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- yborg 7y ago
  Mastodon client can filter on language. Hashtags are a thing, most clients can search/filter on them. The pond is tiny, so certain non-mainstream communities that were driven out of other "real" platforms (i.e. platforms that are trying to sell you something) are a much higher percentage of the feed. But it's more or less just like Twitter, loudmouths tend to dominate, and 95% of the feed is garbage. Instance homing is really the biggest problem Fedi has right now, instances are hard to characterize without camping them for some time, they're mostly small hence the loudmouth problem, and stability is an issue, they still come and go frequently. One of the problems with anarchy is that it's hard to manage.
nirui 7y ago
I was having my 2 cents thought on the topic as well, my conclusion is: A shared blocking list (Or a blockchain system, hehe) can only be used as the last resort. Systems like such already been developed, for example there is one for Twitter made by third-party called "Twitter Block Chain" (https://github.com/satsukitv/twitter-block-chain https://github.com/satsukitv/twitter-block-chain). Yes, it can block "unwanted" posters and bots when a correct list is given, but it could also sometime block innocent accounts when somebody is been mistakenly added to the list (Or that somebody just simply changed their behavior for the better). For such system to work, the maintainer of the list must be trustworthy, which is the hardest part and almost always falls apart. Add to the injury, it can also be very hard for others to detect mistakes sneaked into the list, as the list may contains more than 10,000 items, makes it impossible to be completely verified manually. And what to do if a mistake is indeed discovered? Maintain an unblock list to automatically request the user to unblock? Now user has to maintain their own "Yes I manually blocked this guy" list to counter act the automatic one. My suggestion is: Yes, you can use a shared block list if there is no other way (The Twitter case). But since Mastadon is open sourced, maybe let's try something else first while still can? Please give this a little thought: Can a system be designed in such way that makes it really hard for their user to accidentally come across some unwanted posts (without having to block the poster)?

rapnie 7y ago

And when choosing your following wisely your timeline will just contain what you want it to (e.g. not a furry in sight). This is not so different to Twitter.

seemslegit 7y ago
This isn't a problem when choosing who to follow, just with the first impression someone gets of the public feed.

hkt 7y ago

Same here. After the subsequent ten minutes I concluded that moderating a distributed social network is likely to be impossible. I'd be pretty open to a non-federated social network provided it was a co-op or a foundation running it along a wiki style funding model (eg annual mass begging).

sneak 7y ago
Nobody who you aren’t following can put things into your feed. That’s all the moderation you need; you need not be concerned with the content of the timelines of those you do not follow.
- hkt 7y ago
  Except there are often default feeds of public posts from the community. So, actually..
seemslegit 7y ago
Moderation of one's own feed is not the problem here, the problem is that a community like this is likely to remain perennial if the first impression of it is wierding out the average would-be user.

lainsoykaf 7y ago

Mastodon.social is sadly one of the worst instances to join. Onboarding / Selecting a good instance is the hardest problem for the fediverse.

grishka 7y ago
The problem isn't even that. There's no global account catalog you could search. Thus, you have no way of knowing who of the people you know is on there already. Asking everyone if they know about Mastodon and which instance they're on isn't the answer. I have an idea about making a DHT out of instance servers, but at this point it's purely theoretical. If it does work though, you'll be able to easily import your existing friend lists from centralized services. Could use either their APIs or — better — the GDPR-mandated export feature.
- FalconSensei 7y ago
  > Asking everyone if they know about Mastodon and which instance they're on isn't the answer. Ironically, the only way to do that now is posting on twitter, asking people to reply with their mastodon accounts

sneak 7y ago

Now think about all the places where that doesn’t happen, and think of all the censorship that is being imposed on harmless true self-expression. That’s a feature, not a bug. Being able to post without fear of getting ToS’d and losing your entire audience is one of the major benefits of decentralized systems. Now we just need to figure out how to solve for overzealous admins. I think the default for AP should become “bring your own domain”, even as a leaf user, so that you can seamlessly migrate instances if, for example, your web host or local admin takes issue with something you say.

FalconSensei 7y ago

As someone already mentioned, mastodon.social is not the best entry point. Which is ironic, because it should be. But even if you find a cool instance, it's hard to find people there to follow or conversations you want to join, because you can only search for hashtags. #and #people #dont #write #like #this