6 ms·

I'm not deeply versed in Gab's history... But lets hypothetically say that Gab was not created for that purpose, but for precisely the purpose it claims it was

by oehpr 6y ago

I'm not deeply versed in Gab's history... But lets hypothetically say that Gab was not created for that purpose, but for precisely the purpose it claims it was created for: To be an open platform for free speech, no censorship. Wouldn't it have ended up in the exact same state it is now? Any service that guarantees no censorship is going to have the majority of its userbase be the runoff from other major websites. When voat was created, I 100% believed that they were not attempting to create extremist havens, but their userbase was all the people expelled from reddit for targeted harassment campaigns. I hate this dynamic. We need a way to break this cycle, because right now it's actively killing competitors to existing social networks.

ascorbic 6y ago
If they didn't intend it, they were being incredibly naive. If your defining characteristic is that you don't censor things that are banned on Reddit, then your site is only attractive to people who want to do things banned on Reddit.
- sipos 6y ago
  It wasn't just Reddit they were fleeing. I think it was Twitter too...
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    yes. So again... Reddit and Twitter are already a cesspool of hate. If you are bad enough to be banned there...
sipos 6y ago
Wikipedia cites a articles that show a number of examples of the company Twitter acocunt saying anti-semetic things, for example https://web.archive.org/web/20181031162843/https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/30/tech/gab-anti-semitic-speech-invs/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181031162843/https://www.cnn.c.... I agree with your point - it is hard to tell the difference generally, and it is an important point to remember, but the behaviour of the company itself shows that it is not an issue this time.
kevingadd 6y ago
This is a useless hypothetical. We know what Gab was and why it was taken down. If you want to know how a healthy alternative would have turned out, go looking for one. It almost certainly exists, there have been at least a dozen twitter competitors in the past and I know a few people who tried them out. (I can't remember their names, though.)
KirinDave 6y ago
Gab bans people openly and credulously discussing marxism. I have experimented with and experienced this directly. So, it fails my litmus test for "an uncensored platform." And it's a bit comical, because Gab as a community experience is much smaller (in my perspective) from even weird sites like minds or funky social blockchain plays. Why they felt the need to ban discusions of marxism or a general strike is beyond me.
- oehpr 6y ago
  Fair. By my own admission, I don't know much about gab. I think the first time I ever heard about it was when Firefox banned Dissenter from their addons. Dissenter to me was a genius idea that has an ugly userbase. I'd love to have a version of Dissenter that isn't populated entirely by bigots. I think the idea of Dissenter really has some value, you walk along the web for all sorts of reasons, and then up in the corner in your toolbar you see "oh, someone from my community has said something about this". Rather than the social network taking you to a site, the site takes you to the network.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    That by itself implies that every URL you visit has to be looked up to see if there's a related discussion. No way I'd trust any add-on/startup/mega corp to do that. I barely trust Mozilla to keep my history on their servers, and that's only because they only keep the last few months and purge older data.
    - oehpr 6y ago
      nope, you'd simply distribute a bloom filter to everyone, and then you could transmit hashed urls. you could easily make this privacy safe.
      - KirinDave 6y ago
        This wouldn't address a lot of metadata-related privacy concerns.
damnyou 6y ago
Yes, any large no-censorship platform for humans will be swamped by Nazis. You could avoid being large — small, high-trust groups work perfectly fine without censorship. You could add more moderation (aka censorship), both platform-wide and within communities. Reddit seems to be heading in that direction. You could avoid being a platform. Some sites are inherently platforms, but does every site need comments? Or you could genetically engineer humanity into a kinder, better species. This would also be the way to make anarcho-communism work — the economic system with the greatest freedoms, but also the most susceptible to bad actors. The Culture series shows you a glimpse of what this future could be.
- oehpr 6y ago
  I've got to finish going through The Culture series. I thought it was bold stroke to write a book series about a future where humans are domesticated by their own AI.
  - damnyou 6y ago
    I think the "fully automated gay space luxury communism" depicted in the Culture series is the best future we can hope for. I wouldn't mind welcoming new robot overlords if it makes that possible.
stusmall 6y ago
>I'm not deeply versed in Gab's history... Maybe that's a sign you should pause. Sometimes it is okay to admit you don't know about a subject. It is okay to sit and listen instead of voicing an opinion.
- oehpr 6y ago
  Well... I mean really I was not trying to say Gab was innocent. I really didn't know until others provided some helpful context. I was speaking more to the original topic of this HN submission. I never know how to handle topic shifts in the conversation trees in Reddit, Hacker News, and others. Do you speak only to the comment you're responding to? Do you speak as if that comment is in the context of the submission? Do you keep the context as on topic as possible? Do you indicate which one of the three you're doing when you start your comment off? I feel like this is an internet rule I have not sussed out on my own. And I can see its caused some trouble for others. Sorry.
  - hajimemash 6y ago
    I found interesting your comment and subsequent replies to your comment.
- outoftheabyss 6y ago
  His point stands... and actually contributes to the conversation
betterunix2 6y ago
"Any service that guarantees no censorship is going to have the majority of its userbase be the runoff from other major websites" Exactly, which is why you are wrong here: "When voat was created, I 100% believed that they were not attempting to create extremist havens" It is not as if the major websites are quick to censor their users. If anything they are too cautious and have only banned terrorists after widespread pressure and threats of advertiser boycotts. If you set up a platform that is open to the few people who were so extreme that even Reddit or Twitter banned them, then you are creating an extremist haven, no matter what language you use to describe your intentions.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  > If anything they are too cautious and have only banned terrorists after widespread pressure and threats of advertiser boycotts This is nowhere close to what reddit/twitter have been doing however. > then you are creating an extremist haven ...of people interested in anime porn after reddit banned them.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  One could argue that intentions don't really matter, ether. "The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does" [1]. If your system ends up being a forum for a certain type of posts, then that's kind of what it is, regardless of what you originally wanted it to be. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
d2v 6y ago
>To be an open platform for free speech, no censorship. Unfortunately this kind of rhetoric is frequently coded language meaning "Hey Nazis, we won't kick you off of our platform for threatening to shoot up a synagogue". I think people should still legally be able to create unmoderated platforms, but the majority of people won't participate in them because they quickly become cesspools of hatred and harassment. Gab is the newer, shinier tech startup version of this, but it's existed before in the forms of 4chan, 8chan, and probably other platforms that I'm not familiar with.

by oehpr 6y ago

ascorbic 6y ago

If they didn't intend it, they were being incredibly naive. If your defining characteristic is that you don't censor things that are banned on Reddit, then your site is only attractive to people who want to do things banned on Reddit.

sipos 6y ago
It wasn't just Reddit they were fleeing. I think it was Twitter too...
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  yes. So again... Reddit and Twitter are already a cesspool of hate. If you are bad enough to be banned there...

sipos 6y ago

Wikipedia cites a articles that show a number of examples of the company Twitter acocunt saying anti-semetic things, for example https://web.archive.org/web/20181031162843/https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/30/tech/gab-anti-semitic-speech-invs/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181031162843/https://www.cnn.c.... I agree with your point - it is hard to tell the difference generally, and it is an important point to remember, but the behaviour of the company itself shows that it is not an issue this time.

kevingadd 6y ago

This is a useless hypothetical. We know what Gab was and why it was taken down. If you want to know how a healthy alternative would have turned out, go looking for one. It almost certainly exists, there have been at least a dozen twitter competitors in the past and I know a few people who tried them out. (I can't remember their names, though.)

KirinDave 6y ago

Gab bans people openly and credulously discussing marxism. I have experimented with and experienced this directly. So, it fails my litmus test for "an uncensored platform." And it's a bit comical, because Gab as a community experience is much smaller (in my perspective) from even weird sites like minds or funky social blockchain plays. Why they felt the need to ban discusions of marxism or a general strike is beyond me.

oehpr 6y ago
Fair. By my own admission, I don't know much about gab. I think the first time I ever heard about it was when Firefox banned Dissenter from their addons. Dissenter to me was a genius idea that has an ugly userbase. I'd love to have a version of Dissenter that isn't populated entirely by bigots. I think the idea of Dissenter really has some value, you walk along the web for all sorts of reasons, and then up in the corner in your toolbar you see "oh, someone from my community has said something about this". Rather than the social network taking you to a site, the site takes you to the network.
- input_sh 6y ago
  That by itself implies that every URL you visit has to be looked up to see if there's a related discussion. No way I'd trust any add-on/startup/mega corp to do that. I barely trust Mozilla to keep my history on their servers, and that's only because they only keep the last few months and purge older data.
  - oehpr 6y ago
    nope, you'd simply distribute a bloom filter to everyone, and then you could transmit hashed urls. you could easily make this privacy safe.
    - KirinDave 6y ago
      This wouldn't address a lot of metadata-related privacy concerns.

damnyou 6y ago

Yes, any large no-censorship platform for humans will be swamped by Nazis. You could avoid being large — small, high-trust groups work perfectly fine without censorship. You could add more moderation (aka censorship), both platform-wide and within communities. Reddit seems to be heading in that direction. You could avoid being a platform. Some sites are inherently platforms, but does every site need comments? Or you could genetically engineer humanity into a kinder, better species. This would also be the way to make anarcho-communism work — the economic system with the greatest freedoms, but also the most susceptible to bad actors. The Culture series shows you a glimpse of what this future could be.

oehpr 6y ago
I've got to finish going through The Culture series. I thought it was bold stroke to write a book series about a future where humans are domesticated by their own AI.
- damnyou 6y ago
  I think the "fully automated gay space luxury communism" depicted in the Culture series is the best future we can hope for. I wouldn't mind welcoming new robot overlords if it makes that possible.

stusmall 6y ago

>I'm not deeply versed in Gab's history... Maybe that's a sign you should pause. Sometimes it is okay to admit you don't know about a subject. It is okay to sit and listen instead of voicing an opinion.

oehpr 6y ago
Well... I mean really I was not trying to say Gab was innocent. I really didn't know until others provided some helpful context. I was speaking more to the original topic of this HN submission. I never know how to handle topic shifts in the conversation trees in Reddit, Hacker News, and others. Do you speak only to the comment you're responding to? Do you speak as if that comment is in the context of the submission? Do you keep the context as on topic as possible? Do you indicate which one of the three you're doing when you start your comment off? I feel like this is an internet rule I have not sussed out on my own. And I can see its caused some trouble for others. Sorry.
- hajimemash 6y ago
  I found interesting your comment and subsequent replies to your comment.
outoftheabyss 6y ago
His point stands... and actually contributes to the conversation

betterunix2 6y ago

"Any service that guarantees no censorship is going to have the majority of its userbase be the runoff from other major websites" Exactly, which is why you are wrong here: "When voat was created, I 100% believed that they were not attempting to create extremist havens" It is not as if the major websites are quick to censor their users. If anything they are too cautious and have only banned terrorists after widespread pressure and threats of advertiser boycotts. If you set up a platform that is open to the few people who were so extreme that even Reddit or Twitter banned them, then you are creating an extremist haven, no matter what language you use to describe your intentions.

dependenttypes 6y ago
> If anything they are too cautious and have only banned terrorists after widespread pressure and threats of advertiser boycotts This is nowhere close to what reddit/twitter have been doing however. > then you are creating an extremist haven ...of people interested in anime porn after reddit banned them.
ryandrake 6y ago
One could argue that intentions don't really matter, ether. "The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does" [1]. If your system ends up being a forum for a certain type of posts, then that's kind of what it is, regardless of what you originally wanted it to be. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

d2v 6y ago

>To be an open platform for free speech, no censorship. Unfortunately this kind of rhetoric is frequently coded language meaning "Hey Nazis, we won't kick you off of our platform for threatening to shoot up a synagogue". I think people should still legally be able to create unmoderated platforms, but the majority of people won't participate in them because they quickly become cesspools of hatred and harassment. Gab is the newer, shinier tech startup version of this, but it's existed before in the forms of 4chan, 8chan, and probably other platforms that I'm not familiar with.