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You can solve this with decentralization. Mastodon, for example, is a public square, but no owns it. This is "protocols over platforms" as a sibing comment ment

You can solve this with decentralization. Mastodon, for example, is a public square, but no owns it. This is "protocols over platforms" as a sibing comment mentions.

spicybright 6y ago
It may be technically solved, but if people aren't using it instead of centralized, biased social networking, it's not really a solution in it's current form. Until we can find a way to make a Mastodon better than Facebook, it'll be impossible to gain a critical mass for people to take it seriously. This might come from marketing the benefits of decentralization, maybe finding a way to have a universal "login" page that can direct users to particular nodes, etc.
Latty 6y ago
Who is incentivised to run the instances? So, in the perfect world, you have all these nodes with different levels and types of moderation and people can communicate across them, but pick the level and type of moderation they want by what instance they use, right? The reality is, no one has a good idea how to moderate something at that scale, even with the resources that come from have a walled garden. You don't even get that, and you want better moderation to draw people away? No one is doing it. Then, on the other end, you want someone to believe in free speech enough to host the completely unfiltered one, and not baulk at some point when abhorrent shit is on their server? You just end up with a nazi server run by nazis, because those are the only people who actually want that. It's "solved" only in theory, in practice, there is no practical draw for real-world users.
- mpoteat 6y ago
  If only we had a decentralized way of allowing people to host their own content and draw their own users, without having to rely on a centralized platform... Of course, I'm talking about the Internet itself. Mastodon at first glance it's just an abstraction over an already decentralized system of content.

You can solve this with decentralization. Mastodon, for example, is a public square, but no owns it. This is "protocols over platforms" as a sibing comment mentions.

spicybright 6y ago

It may be technically solved, but if people aren't using it instead of centralized, biased social networking, it's not really a solution in it's current form. Until we can find a way to make a Mastodon better than Facebook, it'll be impossible to gain a critical mass for people to take it seriously. This might come from marketing the benefits of decentralization, maybe finding a way to have a universal "login" page that can direct users to particular nodes, etc.

Latty 6y ago

Who is incentivised to run the instances? So, in the perfect world, you have all these nodes with different levels and types of moderation and people can communicate across them, but pick the level and type of moderation they want by what instance they use, right? The reality is, no one has a good idea how to moderate something at that scale, even with the resources that come from have a walled garden. You don't even get that, and you want better moderation to draw people away? No one is doing it. Then, on the other end, you want someone to believe in free speech enough to host the completely unfiltered one, and not baulk at some point when abhorrent shit is on their server? You just end up with a nazi server run by nazis, because those are the only people who actually want that. It's "solved" only in theory, in practice, there is no practical draw for real-world users.

mpoteat 6y ago
If only we had a decentralized way of allowing people to host their own content and draw their own users, without having to rely on a centralized platform... Of course, I'm talking about the Internet itself. Mastodon at first glance it's just an abstraction over an already decentralized system of content.