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Users won't allow for (use) decentralized platforms until there is a good way to censor them. Once that happens, what would be the point of switching. Facebook

Users won't allow for (use) decentralized platforms until there is a good way to censor them. Once that happens, what would be the point of switching. Facebook and Reddit are successful BECAUSE they are censorship machines. Facebook spends far more man hours on "curating" content compared to engineering. Same with Reddit. Add up all the "moderation" time spent removing negative or controversial posts and I bet much more time is spent on content compared to programming the site. You are not wrong, but even if a perfect decentralized clone existed tomorrow you'd only get young men and programmers to use it, the average TicTok users wants to see beautiful people doing stupid things, they don't care how it happens.

philipov 6y ago
> Users won't allow for (use) decentralized platforms until there is a good way to censor them. > Facebook and Reddit are successful BECAUSE they are censorship machines. Citations needed.
pyronik19 6y ago
Reddit particularly used to be a free speech platform where anything could go and then used network effects to gain dominance. Now that they have dominance they now implement censorship of right wing views comments. This is true for Facebooks deboosting capabilities.
- bradlys 6y ago
  > Now that they have dominance they now implement censorship of right wing views comments. They did the same with chapo - so, it's really not just right wing views...
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    Those platforms don't lack on identitarian division and push of extremist views There might be a slight point that those platforms end up being more of a right wing echo-chamber more than a left-wing one because of some factors. But the bias is on what's in there, not on the platform That being said, nothing was lost of value with the shutting down of T_D (ok, maybe it would be a prime source of information on manipulative state actors, but they can work on what they have already)
- Daishiman 6y ago
  I'm not seeing "school vouchers" or "individual responsibility", classical pillars of Conservative values, being censored. I am seeing a ton of censoring of racist and hateful comments, both openly so and dog whistles. So unless you're claiming that right-wing values are inherently racist or hateful...
  - vanniv 6y ago
    You aren't seeing that content censored, because that content has been censored, and its posters vilified so completely, for so long, that it has disappeared. There are virtually zero republicans or conservatives on any social media site -- they know they aren't welcome, so they don't engage very much. You don't see them being censored because, at this point, they self-censor. Who wants to be doxxed and have their employer harassed into firing them just for trying to have a calm conversation with people who want to murder them anyway
    - kaens 6y ago
      i see them literally all the time. there's plenty in this thread. there's plenty on reddit. there's plenty on twitter. what are you talking about?
- stu2b50 6y ago
  The reddit administration honestly does very little active moderation. It's a shocker that they actually enforced their rules in the title. Almost all censorship is moderation. And that's "decentralized" and not part of the company itself. Honestly, Reddit would be better if they started laying down the law.
  - skrowl 6y ago
    Reddit removed The_Donald from showing up in All, changed their search algorithm, and changed the number of active users showing up on T_D (they screwed up and you could see the true number on their ad buy portal). Those were all 100% admin actions to censor, not moderator actions.
    - stu2b50 6y ago
      And T_D should be banned years ago for blatant doxxing, brigading, and threats of violence, all clear violations of Reddit's rules. The admin has repeatedly been too scared to enforce their own rules, just doing half measures like that to pass the buck.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
pjc50 6y ago
Indeed. The average user, especially women, does not enjoy having their boundaries pushed by an escalation of shocking (but not illegal!) and pornographic (but not illegal!) images, which you will get if you don't have moderation, and even a bit if you do. As proven by Slashdot twenty years ago. Oh, and the plain spam. C1al1s spammers can fill your entire board if you let them.
- numpad0 6y ago
  Having seen countless female gore/porn artists on social networking I’m not so sure how important of a problem it is... especially the porn part
  - a_t48 6y ago
    Consent is important here.
    - techlaw 6y ago
      Logged in just to thank you for your comment (which is 100% correct). So few people understand the role & importance of consent and your comment is appreciated. Thank you!
  - drdeca 6y ago
    There are many many people. As such, the fact that many people like something does not imply that the typical person doesn’t dislike that thing.
- esperent 6y ago
  > The average user, especially women, It consistently amazes me that people deny the possibility that women enjoy pornography. On the contrary, a large amount, possibly even the majority, of pornography on reddit is posted and created by women. Some of them do so to make money, but a lot do it simply because they enjoy it. Many women enjoy (for lack of a better word) gore, horror, and shock content too. > does not enjoy having their boundaries pushed Again to the contrary, the majority of people, especially young people, actively seek to have their boundaries pushed to one degree or another.
proverbialbunny 6y ago
Actually, that's not quite true. Reddit's first wave of popularity came from a lack of censorship. There was a decryption code posted on a news story on Digg that allowed one to decrypt a bluray. Digg got a cease and desist, took it down, and people started protesting on Digg posting the code everywhere. During this time was the first wave where people started jumping from Digg to Reddit because of the lack of censorship. The lack of censorship was so bad Reddit used to have a lot of child porn on it and Reddit fought the US gov on it stating it shouldn't have to censor content. I suspect The_Donald has been shut down primarily due to a lack of moderators. This causes drama to get escalated outside of the sub and the Reddit admins do not want to deal with it. Reddit is still very much anti censorship.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  > Reddit is still very much anti censorship. This is just not true. They are very transparently trying to kick off users/communities that they don't "like". For example basically any subreddit associated with the "alt right", except I believe /r/DebateTheAltRight or whatever it's called. It's very simple: (1) Identify community that you don't like, generally due to association with anti-leftist political views (2) Find an instance of a threat of violence, regardless of context (i.e. the threat coming from someone who isn't a "real" community member) (3) Use (2) to have a justified reason for "quarantining" the community, which is just the first step in a long, slow death-squeeze. From my understanding, those at /r/The_Donald saw the obvious writing on the wall and thus migrated to the donald.win quite some time ago.
  - andybak 6y ago
    The sense of persecution and victim-hood I hear from the right seems rather at odds with how damn successful they seem to be at the moment. It's like when the silent majority was anything but.
    - Gunax 6y ago
      This is difficult because there are different definitions of 'right' as well as different environments. They can be successful at the ballot box nationally but still be persecuted. Remember that Brendan Eich was forced out of Mozilla for his views. To be a professor in University of California one has to pass a political litmus test. So yea I do think there is persecution.
lucasmullens 6y ago
> Users won't allow for (use) decentralized platforms until there is a good way to censor them. Once that happens, what would be the point of switching. You could imagine a world where there's multiple apps that access the same decentralized platform, where the censoring happens at the application level. So if your favorite community gets banned in one app, if you want, you could switch to a different app. Not a perfect example, but it would be like how if Google Chrome decided to block somerandomcommunityexample.com you could just switch to Firefox.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Imagine? Isn't that how mastodon works today?
- spaced-out 6y ago
  And how would a community deal with being brigaded by another, often larger community?
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Wouldn't each community have their own userbase? So brigaders would need to make new accounts to execute the attack. Maybe a hill/gate could be introduced for new accounts to rate-limit the influx?
- carry_bit 6y ago
  The likely outcome of that is that any app that didn't some communities would itself be banned from the Google and Apple app stores.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  I like it! Every community could have their own "domain" and you could choose, at any time, which ones to visit and which to ignore and there would be a search engine to help find new communities for you. (All jokes aside, I really love your idea of having different apps act like lenses or filters which give you different views of the same underlying ecosystem. That's the kind of conceptual novelty that's in short supply right now.)
stale2002 6y ago
> Same with Reddit. Add up all the "moderation" time spent removing negative or controversial posts and I bet much more time is spent on content compared to programming the site. Well, but there is easy solution to this. Just do it in the exact same way the reddit does it, which is to have individual fiafdom communities that have self appointed moderators in charge of their own communities. So, if a user doesn't like a certain community, with a certain moderation policy, they can stop reading that one, and instead go to a different community with a better policy.
monksy 6y ago
Facebook and Reddit are successful because it allows for the users to be social with people they know/recognize. Spam removal is the biggest element of reddit and FB. Unwanted content detracts from the original goal. (Also moderating in it's self does kill a community if done badly)
zackees 6y ago
It already exists. It's called Gab and it's growing incredibly fast.

philipov 6y ago

> Users won't allow for (use) decentralized platforms until there is a good way to censor them. > Facebook and Reddit are successful BECAUSE they are censorship machines. Citations needed.

pyronik19 6y ago

Reddit particularly used to be a free speech platform where anything could go and then used network effects to gain dominance. Now that they have dominance they now implement censorship of right wing views comments. This is true for Facebooks deboosting capabilities.

bradlys 6y ago
> Now that they have dominance they now implement censorship of right wing views comments. They did the same with chapo - so, it's really not just right wing views...
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Those platforms don't lack on identitarian division and push of extremist views There might be a slight point that those platforms end up being more of a right wing echo-chamber more than a left-wing one because of some factors. But the bias is on what's in there, not on the platform That being said, nothing was lost of value with the shutting down of T_D (ok, maybe it would be a prime source of information on manipulative state actors, but they can work on what they have already)
Daishiman 6y ago
I'm not seeing "school vouchers" or "individual responsibility", classical pillars of Conservative values, being censored. I am seeing a ton of censoring of racist and hateful comments, both openly so and dog whistles. So unless you're claiming that right-wing values are inherently racist or hateful...
- vanniv 6y ago
  You aren't seeing that content censored, because that content has been censored, and its posters vilified so completely, for so long, that it has disappeared. There are virtually zero republicans or conservatives on any social media site -- they know they aren't welcome, so they don't engage very much. You don't see them being censored because, at this point, they self-censor. Who wants to be doxxed and have their employer harassed into firing them just for trying to have a calm conversation with people who want to murder them anyway
  - kaens 6y ago
    i see them literally all the time. there's plenty in this thread. there's plenty on reddit. there's plenty on twitter. what are you talking about?
stu2b50 6y ago
The reddit administration honestly does very little active moderation. It's a shocker that they actually enforced their rules in the title. Almost all censorship is moderation. And that's "decentralized" and not part of the company itself. Honestly, Reddit would be better if they started laying down the law.
- skrowl 6y ago
  Reddit removed The_Donald from showing up in All, changed their search algorithm, and changed the number of active users showing up on T_D (they screwed up and you could see the true number on their ad buy portal). Those were all 100% admin actions to censor, not moderator actions.
  - stu2b50 6y ago
    And T_D should be banned years ago for blatant doxxing, brigading, and threats of violence, all clear violations of Reddit's rules. The admin has repeatedly been too scared to enforce their own rules, just doing half measures like that to pass the buck.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

pjc50 6y ago

Indeed. The average user, especially women, does not enjoy having their boundaries pushed by an escalation of shocking (but not illegal!) and pornographic (but not illegal!) images, which you will get if you don't have moderation, and even a bit if you do. As proven by Slashdot twenty years ago. Oh, and the plain spam. C1al1s spammers can fill your entire board if you let them.

numpad0 6y ago
Having seen countless female gore/porn artists on social networking I’m not so sure how important of a problem it is... especially the porn part
- a_t48 6y ago
  Consent is important here.
  - techlaw 6y ago
    Logged in just to thank you for your comment (which is 100% correct). So few people understand the role & importance of consent and your comment is appreciated. Thank you!
- drdeca 6y ago
  There are many many people. As such, the fact that many people like something does not imply that the typical person doesn’t dislike that thing.
esperent 6y ago
> The average user, especially women, It consistently amazes me that people deny the possibility that women enjoy pornography. On the contrary, a large amount, possibly even the majority, of pornography on reddit is posted and created by women. Some of them do so to make money, but a lot do it simply because they enjoy it. Many women enjoy (for lack of a better word) gore, horror, and shock content too. > does not enjoy having their boundaries pushed Again to the contrary, the majority of people, especially young people, actively seek to have their boundaries pushed to one degree or another.

proverbialbunny 6y ago

Actually, that's not quite true. Reddit's first wave of popularity came from a lack of censorship. There was a decryption code posted on a news story on Digg that allowed one to decrypt a bluray. Digg got a cease and desist, took it down, and people started protesting on Digg posting the code everywhere. During this time was the first wave where people started jumping from Digg to Reddit because of the lack of censorship. The lack of censorship was so bad Reddit used to have a lot of child porn on it and Reddit fought the US gov on it stating it shouldn't have to censor content. I suspect The_Donald has been shut down primarily due to a lack of moderators. This causes drama to get escalated outside of the sub and the Reddit admins do not want to deal with it. Reddit is still very much anti censorship.

ryankemper 6y ago
> Reddit is still very much anti censorship. This is just not true. They are very transparently trying to kick off users/communities that they don't "like". For example basically any subreddit associated with the "alt right", except I believe /r/DebateTheAltRight or whatever it's called. It's very simple: (1) Identify community that you don't like, generally due to association with anti-leftist political views (2) Find an instance of a threat of violence, regardless of context (i.e. the threat coming from someone who isn't a "real" community member) (3) Use (2) to have a justified reason for "quarantining" the community, which is just the first step in a long, slow death-squeeze. From my understanding, those at /r/The_Donald saw the obvious writing on the wall and thus migrated to the donald.win quite some time ago.
- andybak 6y ago
  The sense of persecution and victim-hood I hear from the right seems rather at odds with how damn successful they seem to be at the moment. It's like when the silent majority was anything but.
  - Gunax 6y ago
    This is difficult because there are different definitions of 'right' as well as different environments. They can be successful at the ballot box nationally but still be persecuted. Remember that Brendan Eich was forced out of Mozilla for his views. To be a professor in University of California one has to pass a political litmus test. So yea I do think there is persecution.

lucasmullens 6y ago

> Users won't allow for (use) decentralized platforms until there is a good way to censor them. Once that happens, what would be the point of switching. You could imagine a world where there's multiple apps that access the same decentralized platform, where the censoring happens at the application level. So if your favorite community gets banned in one app, if you want, you could switch to a different app. Not a perfect example, but it would be like how if Google Chrome decided to block somerandomcommunityexample.com you could just switch to Firefox.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
Imagine? Isn't that how mastodon works today?
spaced-out 6y ago
And how would a community deal with being brigaded by another, often larger community?
- edoceo 6y ago
  Wouldn't each community have their own userbase? So brigaders would need to make new accounts to execute the attack. Maybe a hill/gate could be introduced for new accounts to rate-limit the influx?
carry_bit 6y ago
The likely outcome of that is that any app that didn't some communities would itself be banned from the Google and Apple app stores.
jrumbut 6y ago
I like it! Every community could have their own "domain" and you could choose, at any time, which ones to visit and which to ignore and there would be a search engine to help find new communities for you. (All jokes aside, I really love your idea of having different apps act like lenses or filters which give you different views of the same underlying ecosystem. That's the kind of conceptual novelty that's in short supply right now.)

stale2002 6y ago

> Same with Reddit. Add up all the "moderation" time spent removing negative or controversial posts and I bet much more time is spent on content compared to programming the site. Well, but there is easy solution to this. Just do it in the exact same way the reddit does it, which is to have individual fiafdom communities that have self appointed moderators in charge of their own communities. So, if a user doesn't like a certain community, with a certain moderation policy, they can stop reading that one, and instead go to a different community with a better policy.

monksy 6y ago

Facebook and Reddit are successful because it allows for the users to be social with people they know/recognize. Spam removal is the biggest element of reddit and FB. Unwanted content detracts from the original goal. (Also moderating in it's self does kill a community if done badly)

zackees 6y ago

It already exists. It's called Gab and it's growing incredibly fast.