5 ms·

I don't know. Facebook can spot fake profiles because of the centralisation, not sure how that'd be avoided in that system. Also, if users are really anonymous,

by aflag 6y ago

I don't know. Facebook can spot fake profiles because of the centralisation, not sure how that'd be avoided in that system. Also, if users are really anonymous, the system will end up turning into a cesspool of disgusting and illegal stuff. At least that was the fate of all peer to peer social networks I'm aware of.

curryst 6y ago
That would be handled client-side, like email. You could build in a standard set of rules, and then have some kind of ML process profiles you manually mark as spam. Just have it filter profiles in API requests through the fake profile detector. > At least that was the fate of all peer to peer social networks I'm aware of. That doesn't seem true of Mastodon. The few servers I've been on were fairly tame. I think the worst I saw was someone posted a sexualized anime-style image, but there wasn't any nudity. I didn't immediately spot anything weird on Diaspora either, but I only spent like 45 minutes on there. > Also, if users are really anonymous, the system will end up turning into a cesspool of disgusting and illegal stuff. Anonymity can be okay, but only in the presence of heavy moderation. HN is basically anonymous if you want it to be, but it stays on target because of the moderation. You can see it on Reddit too. AskHistorians is a wonderful place to be; the subreddits without even basic moderation do indeed turn into cesspools. Federation has historically made this difficult because you can only moderate your own instance, which is often a minority of the content you consume. There are potential solutions for that, though. You could allow users to "flag" posts, and add those flags to the data you federate. Then, like the fake profile system, you could filter them based on user parameters. I.e. hide posts that have at least 1 "racism" flag. If necessary to prevent brigades, you could also filter the flags that you accept based on the user that flagged the post. Maybe weight them based on similarities in accounts you follow.
- aflag 6y ago
  I have to admit I haven't look into p2p social networks in years. The ones I've tried in early 2000s (such as freenet) had really dodgy users. Perhaps a lot was learned since then. Anyway, I agree with you that what really prevents people from using the system for nastiness is moderation and not necessarily identity. However, the problem is not only fringe and extremist beliefs, but actually becoming a platform for actual crime, through sharing of photos and videos of abuse. That's what worries me the most about p2p social networks and the reason I'm generally not ok with storing other people's data in my computer, even if encrypted.
lilactown 6y ago
A lot of facebook's value prop for users is in what you're saying - not as a social media company, but as a centralized identity provider for the social graph. Perhaps a decentralized solution could still use a centralized identity provider to help with things like spam & impersonation/fake profiles and prove who they are, while still allowing users to own the information _about_ themselves. The problem here is incentives; there's not much money in being a dumb identity resolver unless you're harvesting everyones data AFAICT, so I sort of doubt a private consumer solution will emerge in the near future.
- corytheboyd 6y ago
  It’ll never happen (in the United States at least) but this then sounds like a service that should be run by the local government, or perhaps something more global. People on HN often talk of making the internet an actual public utility, perhaps something like centralized online identify would follow a move like that
  - lilactown 6y ago
    yes absolutely. In my scifi utopia, the government provides a digital identity to each citizen as a social service :) One of the downsides of this is that it actually degrades privacy by improving private institutions (and the governments) ability to track you. One way I've thought of to get around this is to allow people to spawn new identities from their own root identity. This could allow a certain amount of anonymity, while allowing institutions to filter identities by requiring a certain amount of social proof (e.g. length of time since identity has been created). Some services might ban non-root identities (e.g. banks), while others (like a bar) just needs to be able to trust that you have a valid ID and can be used to prove you're over a certain bio age. In the event that you need to prove you own a specific ID, there could be a way that given a root ID and a non-root ID, you re-generate the non-root ID from the root - thus proving you own it.

by aflag 6y ago

curryst 6y ago

That would be handled client-side, like email. You could build in a standard set of rules, and then have some kind of ML process profiles you manually mark as spam. Just have it filter profiles in API requests through the fake profile detector. > At least that was the fate of all peer to peer social networks I'm aware of. That doesn't seem true of Mastodon. The few servers I've been on were fairly tame. I think the worst I saw was someone posted a sexualized anime-style image, but there wasn't any nudity. I didn't immediately spot anything weird on Diaspora either, but I only spent like 45 minutes on there. > Also, if users are really anonymous, the system will end up turning into a cesspool of disgusting and illegal stuff. Anonymity can be okay, but only in the presence of heavy moderation. HN is basically anonymous if you want it to be, but it stays on target because of the moderation. You can see it on Reddit too. AskHistorians is a wonderful place to be; the subreddits without even basic moderation do indeed turn into cesspools. Federation has historically made this difficult because you can only moderate your own instance, which is often a minority of the content you consume. There are potential solutions for that, though. You could allow users to "flag" posts, and add those flags to the data you federate. Then, like the fake profile system, you could filter them based on user parameters. I.e. hide posts that have at least 1 "racism" flag. If necessary to prevent brigades, you could also filter the flags that you accept based on the user that flagged the post. Maybe weight them based on similarities in accounts you follow.

aflag 6y ago
I have to admit I haven't look into p2p social networks in years. The ones I've tried in early 2000s (such as freenet) had really dodgy users. Perhaps a lot was learned since then. Anyway, I agree with you that what really prevents people from using the system for nastiness is moderation and not necessarily identity. However, the problem is not only fringe and extremist beliefs, but actually becoming a platform for actual crime, through sharing of photos and videos of abuse. That's what worries me the most about p2p social networks and the reason I'm generally not ok with storing other people's data in my computer, even if encrypted.

lilactown 6y ago

A lot of facebook's value prop for users is in what you're saying - not as a social media company, but as a centralized identity provider for the social graph. Perhaps a decentralized solution could still use a centralized identity provider to help with things like spam & impersonation/fake profiles and prove who they are, while still allowing users to own the information _about_ themselves. The problem here is incentives; there's not much money in being a dumb identity resolver unless you're harvesting everyones data AFAICT, so I sort of doubt a private consumer solution will emerge in the near future.

corytheboyd 6y ago
It’ll never happen (in the United States at least) but this then sounds like a service that should be run by the local government, or perhaps something more global. People on HN often talk of making the internet an actual public utility, perhaps something like centralized online identify would follow a move like that
- lilactown 6y ago
  yes absolutely. In my scifi utopia, the government provides a digital identity to each citizen as a social service :) One of the downsides of this is that it actually degrades privacy by improving private institutions (and the governments) ability to track you. One way I've thought of to get around this is to allow people to spawn new identities from their own root identity. This could allow a certain amount of anonymity, while allowing institutions to filter identities by requiring a certain amount of social proof (e.g. length of time since identity has been created). Some services might ban non-root identities (e.g. banks), while others (like a bar) just needs to be able to trust that you have a valid ID and can be used to prove you're over a certain bio age. In the event that you need to prove you own a specific ID, there could be a way that given a root ID and a non-root ID, you re-generate the non-root ID from the root - thus proving you own it.